At Empower Field at Mile High, Week 5 is going to be spectacular. In the event that the release board wasn’t at that point overflowing with material between the Denver Mustangs and New York Planes, quarterback Aaron Rodgers just fanned the fire by punching back at Sean Payton.
Payton criticized former Denver Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett, who is now the Jets’ offensive coordinator, in an interview with Jarrett Bell of USA Today last week. Rodgers, who figured out how to at last power right out of Green Sound to follow Hackett to New York, didn’t warmly embrace Payton’s dressing down of Hackett.
“I love Nathaniel Hackett. “Those remarks were very surprising,” Rodgers told NFL Network interviewer Peter Schrager during a live segment from Jets training camp. to act that way toward another coach. I have a deep affection for Hackett. We had a few extraordinary years together in Green Narrows. [ We maintained contact. He and his family have my heart. He’s a staggering family man, a unimaginable father. Additionally, he is unquestionably my favorite NFL coach on the field. Simply his way to deal with it, how he makes it fun, how he thinks often about the folks — exactly the way in which he continues on ahead with deference, with administration, with trustworthiness, with uprightness. I felt bad that someone who has done a lot in the league is so insecure that they have to take down another player to set themselves up for an easy fall if things don’t go their way this year. I thought it was way off the mark, unseemly, and I think he really wants to keep my mentor’s name out of his mouth.”
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Rodgers’ protection of Hackett is honorable, however he totally overlooked Payton’s center contention; that Hackett’s 2022 group of work in Denver was, truth be told, “one of the most awful training position throughout the entire existence of the NFL.” 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 would still have to be considered, even if one were to oppose Payton’s perspective and dismiss it as a highly biased opinion.
That rundown of mentors can be relied on one hand. In this way, as a matter of fact, Hackett conveys not just that questionable imprint on his NFL training resume, yet he likewise possesses the revolting differentiation of being the mentor to direct one of the most disturbing single-season quarterback relapses ever, as a nine-time Supportive of Bowler in his eleventh year in a real sense broke down to profundities until now concealed — on his watch.
In addition, despite the pain, nothing Payton said about Russell Wilson or Hackett was false. Payton’s comments about the Jets trying to “win the offseason” and how that typically plays out for NFL teams can be criticized, but he was not wrong about Hackett.
Now, it is possible to argue, and this is part of what Rodgers says, that Payton was wrong to take such a public shot at Hackett, that it was unkind or even professional distasteful, and that this is part of what Rodgers says. I would agree that that it was maybe underneath Payton, yet that would be an assessment, and it would hold some water as he backtracked on his remarks in a public interview on Friday.
In spite of the fact that Payton didn’t apologize for the substance of the thing he said about Hackett, he was by all accounts “lamenting” that he broadcasted that clothing openly. I have to wonder how much of Payton’s regret he feels because he feels a little bit hypocritical as the new Broncos coach for starting a media storm that was a big distraction from training camp when he has been telling his players to be “anonymous donors,” stay out of the spotlight, and just work.
That is a greater amount of the tone his ‘statement of regret’ took when Payton took to the platform on Friday after his Hackett remarks shot through the NFL far and wide.
Payton stated, “I had one of those moments where I still had my FOX hat on rather than my coaching hat.” In the last meeting, I told the team the following: We had an incredible offseason, comparative with that. I’ve been teaching that message, and I’m right here — the veteran — stepping in it. It was an opportunity for growth for me. It was evidently a mistake. I could have used a little more filter.
Rodgers’ interpretation of the inspiration driving Payton’s public chastisement of Hackett — that he’s getting himself in a position for a mulligan by having a substitute to highlight assuming he neglects to move the Horses’ needled in 2023 — is fascinating, and worth contemplating, yet just Payton knows the solution to that one. Notwithstanding, in the wake of filling in as lead trainer in New Orleans for 10 years and-a-half, I have my questions that Payton is “shaky” about bearing exclusive requirements.
In the retaliation, Rodgers and Jets offensive lineman Billy Turner join Payton in calling the Broncos’ head coach a “f*cking bum” in a social media post. It will be interesting to see how everything plays out and whether the thermonuclear bomb Payton detonated inside the Jets HQ is captured by the Hard Knocks cameras.