Panthers safety Mike Mitchell has made plenty of big (and expensive) hits this year, but he was putting his backpedal on display Wednesday.
Mitchell took a step back from a previous conversation when he suggested Saints quarterback Drew Brees “stop being soft,” coincidentally making amends days before he has to play Brees.
“I don’t really think he’s a soft player,” Mitchell said, via Jonathan Jones of the Charlotte Observer. “Obviously he’s a very, very, very good quarterback, and I have a lot of respect for what he’s done as a player and what he’s done in this league.
“It was really just more of a comment on the rule changes. It was really a 15-minute interview where someone took 45 seconds and made an article out of it.”
Well, yeah. That’s kind of how articles get made. So apparently that means Mitchell didn’t really mean the thing that fell out of his mouth, since many other things did too.
The Panthers safety has made a bit of a habit of saying silly things this year, and you get the feeling the Saints might linger on the original comments more than the attempt to soften them.