Aaron Rodgers Punches Back at Sean Payton, Broncos
Week 5 is going to be lit at Empower Field at Mile High. If the bulletin board wasn't already rife with material between the Denver Broncos and New York Jets, quarterback Aaron Rodgers just added fuel to the fire by punching back at Sean Payton.
In an interview with USA Today's Jarrett Bell last week, Payton slammed ex-Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett — now the Jets offensive coordinator. Rodgers, who managed to finally force his way out of Green Bay to follow Hackett to New York, didn't take kindly to Payton's dressing down of Hackett.
"I love Nathaniel Hackett. Those comments were very surprising," Rodgers told Peter Schrager during an interview segment live from Jets training camp on NFL Network. "For a coach to do that to another coach. My love for Hackett goes deep. We had some great years together in Green Bay. [We] kept in touch. I love him and his family. He's an incredible family man, an incredible dad. And on the field, he's arguably my favorite coach I've ever had in the NFL. Just his approach to it, how he makes it fun, how he cares about the guys—just how he goes about his business with respect, with leadership, with honesty, with integrity. It made me feel bad that someone who's accomplished a lot in the league is that insecure that they have to take another man down to set themselves up for some sort of easy fall if it doesn't go well for that team this year. I thought it was way out of line, inappropriate, and I think he needs to keep my coach's name out of his mouth."
Rodgers' defense of Hackett is admirable, but he completely ignored Payton's core argument; that Hackett's 2022 body of work in Denver was, in fact, "one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL." Even if one were to oppose Payton's take and dismiss it as a highly biased opinion, one would still have to contend with the historical veracity of Hackett joining a small group of coaches in the Super Bowl era to be fired before his first season was even over.
That list of coaches can be counted on one hand. So, in fact, Hackett carries not only that dubious mark on his NFL coaching resume, but he also owns the ugly distinction of being the coach to preside over one of the most alarming single-season quarterback regressions of all time, as a nine-time Pro-Bowler in his 11th year literally melted down to depths heretofore unseen — on his watch.
Beyond that, although it hurts, nothing Payton said about Hackett, or Russell Wilson, was untrue. One can pick nits in Payton's comments about the Jets trying to "win the offseason" and how that traditionally plays out for NFL teams, but nothing he said about Hackett was incorrect.
Now, it can be argued, and this is part of what Rodgers asserts, that Payton was wrong to take aim at Hackett in such a public way — that it was unkind or even professionally distasteful. I would say that it was perhaps beneath Payton, but that would be an opinion, and it would hold some water as he did backtrack on his comments in a press conference on Friday.
Although Payton didn't apologize for the content of what he said about Hackett, he seemed to be "regretting" that he aired that laundry in public. I have to wonder how much of Payton's regret stems from perhaps feeling a bit hypocritical as the new leader of the Broncos for creating a media firestorm that very much was a distraction to open training camp, when he has hammered his players about being "anonymous donors," staying out of the limelight, and just doing the work.
That's more of the tone his 'apology' took when Payton took to the podium on Friday after his Hackett comments shot through the NFL like wildfire.
“I had one of those moments where I still had my FOX hat on and not my coaching hat," Payton said. "I said this to the team in the meeting yesterday: We had a great offseason, relative to that. I’ve been preaching that message, and here I am—the veteran—stepping in it. It was a learning experience for me. It was a mistake, obviously. I needed a little bit more filter. "
Rodgers' take on the motivation behind Payton's public castigation of Hackett — that he's setting himself up for a mulligan by having a scapegoat to point to if he fails to move the Broncos' needled in 2023 — is interesting, and worth pondering, but only Payton knows the answer to that one. However, after serving as head coach in New Orleans for a decade-and-a-half, I have my doubts that Payton is "insecure" about shouldering high expectations.
Rodgers joins Jets offensive lineman Billy Turner in the clap-back at Payton, the latter of whom called the Broncos' head coach a "f*cking bum" in a social media post. It'll be fun to see how it all plays out, and whether the Hard Knocks cameras capture any of the fallout from the thermonuclear bomb Payton detonated inside Jets HQ.
When Week 5 rolls around, though, Broncos Country had better get its popcorn ready.
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