After Sunday’s shocking loss to the Chargers in Los Angeles, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers used his post-game press conference to express his displeasure with the result -- and presumably to send a message to one or more members of the organization.
“We’ve got to be honest with our routine and the decisions we made in the last 48 hours, and make sure that our head is in the right place the next time we come on a big road trip,” Rodgers said at the time.
On Wednesday, Rodgers was asked by reporters to elaborate on those remarks.
“I just think that, you know, every time you go on a trip, we say it’s a business trip,” Rodgers said. “Our job is to go out and win games. I was basically saying all of us, we’ve gotta look at our schedule, our routine, what we did, and make sure we were getting the proper rest and taking care of ourselves the right way. Because it was such a different feeling, we just didn’t have that normal juice. I just felt like maybe we’ve got to rest more. Guys on their day off or whatever. We just look at what we did on those two days and make sure that we’re feeling super-energetic on game day. I’m not calling anybody specifically out, I was just saying there was obviously something that threw us off a little bit energetically. We’ve just got to fix that before our next trip.”
Rodgers twice mentioned the word “rest.” And while he said he’s not “calling anybody specifically out,” Rodgers never says anything accidentally. By using the word “rest” not once but twice, Rodgers is making his specific concerns clear: His teammates weren’t sufficiently rested.
Rodgers’ explanation also bolsters speculation that maybe more than a few Packers players enjoyed a night out in L.A. after the team arrived on Friday, keeping them from getting the sleep and rest needed to be as energetic as they needed to be come Sunday.
Whatever it was, they need to get it figured out, because they’re going back to California in two weeks, to play the 49ers.