The border war between the Packers and Vikings gets a little more intriguing than usual this year, with receiver Greg Jennings defecting from Green Bay to Minneapolis. Now, Jennings is doing his part to make things even more interesting, by poking at a quarterback with a reputation for being sensitive.
Previously, Jennings would toss a random barb that could be laughed off as a joke. But Jennings didn’t seem to be joking in his most recent comments about Aaron Rodgers.
“A lot of times when you have a guy who creates that spotlight for himself and establishes that and takes a lot of that, it becomes so-and-so and the team,” Jennings tells Dan Wiederer of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It should always be the team. . . .
“For me, I’m such a team person, I’m going to defer to my teammates. I’m going to defer to the team, to the team, to the team. And I think when you reach a point where you’re not deferring any longer, it’s no longer really about the team.”
Jennings then reportedly “paused and looked around,” perhaps because he feared Rodgers was lurking in the corner with a sock full of pennies.
“Don’t get me wrong, ‘12’ is a great person,” Jennings said. “But when you hear all positives, all positives, all positives all the time, it’s hard for you to sit down when one of your teammates says, ‘Man, come on, you’ve got to hold yourself accountable for this.’ It’s hard for someone to see that now because all they’ve heard is I’m doing it the right way, I’m perfect. In actuality, we all have flaws.”
That seems to mean that Rodgers doesn’t react well when someone tries to tell him that there’s something he’s not doing that he should do, or something he’s doing that he needs to quit doing. It also suggests that there’s resentment of Rodgers within the Green Bay building, and that Jennings is trying to stir some of it up from afar.
Either way, look for Jennings to keep poking at Rodgers. The former Packer seems to know how to get under his former quarterback’s skin -- and the former Packer apparently thinks it will help his new team beat his old team.