One of the things about the Bears that you have to like is that they stick together as a unit. For instance, you know there are guys on that team who don’t 100% approve of Jay Cutler and the way he choses to conduct himself. But they’d never dream of commenting on it publicly because nothing good can come from it. We therefore hear about nothing but the good things from Cutler’s teammates.
Contrast with Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rogers. Last week, Nick Barnett and Jermichael Finley expressed some hurt feelings over the plan to leave them out of the team’s Super Bowl photo. The team re-scheduled the date of the photo – partly at Rogers’ request – and we all thought the issue was over.
But apparently not. Rogers couldn’t help himself as he commented further yesterday via Pete Dougherty at the Green Bay Press Gazette:
“Rodgers suggested that players shouldn’t complain about not being in the photo if they conducted most of their rehabilitation away from the team.
“’I’ll say this, I was on IR back in 2006, and I chose to stick around and finish out the season with my guys and be here every game,’ Rodgers said. ‘Some of those guys didn’t.
“’So we love ’em, we care about ’em, we don’t wish injury on anybody. But this is a group of guys that’s really come together, and it’s been great to work with the guys we brought in, midseason some of them, and the young guys. Some of the guys who were injured, they’re still a part of this team, but some of them didn’t choose to stick around.’”
Not surprisingly, Barnett and Finley took exception via Twitter. Barnett started the ball rolling by this amongst other things:
“Doubt you get the full attention needed.. It’s easy to speak about others when you are not in their position.. Talk about ‘union’ ha.”
Finely responded to Barnett:
“TRUE FACTS RIGHT THERE.”
Before Barnett deleted his comments, he finally tweeted this:
“Before I delete this page just wanted to say I was never trying to be a distration”
Too late.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. It’s lesson that the veteran Rogers needs to learn fast as he enters the spotlight on the big stage.