Alexander Mattison: Aaron Rodgers out of NFC North is 'breath of fresh air'
No disrespect from Alexander Mattison to Jordan Love, but the Minnesota Vikings running back is much happier that Love is quarterbacking the Green Bay Packers instead of Aaron Rodgers.
I'm pretty happy, to say the least. He definitely is one of those guys that can just terrorize a division. To see him gone, for us, is kind of like a breath of fresh air," Mattison said in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
"You don't want to say that the other quarterback is not good or anything like that, but you just understand what you're getting with such a great player with Aaron Rodgers. It just makes a whole team play better. For him to have gone to another team outside of our division, it definitely helps us understand that at least we can say he's gone. He's out of there."
Rodgers is 59-24-1 in his career against NFC North opponents, including a ridiculously dominant 24-5 against the Bears, 18-8 against the Lions and 17-11-1 against the Vikings.
Mattison and the Vikings report to training camp next week, with the first official practice set for 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 29. Mattison is the No. 1 running back in Minnesota, taking the place of Dalvin Cook, who remains unsigned since being released by the Vikings in early June.
"I'm hoping to make as much of an impact as he did, if not strive to do even more. I think that I definitely am prepared for this opportunity in front of me," Mattison told SI.
The running back position will be one of the position battles to monitor during camp. Not the No. 1 job, but the backup role appears to be up for grabs between Ty Chandler, Kene Nwangwu and DeWayne McBride.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.