Rodgers trying to deal with pro-Favre crowd
By Tom Silverstein
Friday, Aug 8 2008, 06:26 PM
Green Bay -- After addressing a large contingent of media at his locker this morning, Aaron Rodgers spoke casually with a couple of newspaper reporters and spoke of some of the things he's had to put up with during training camp.
Rodgers said he's been handling the boos with no problem, but some of the personal attacks have bothered him. Probably every practice there's one or two pro-Brett Favre people who are yelling things loud enough for the players to hear them.
But Rodgers said he hears things off the field, too.
"I understand it to some point if I put myself into a Favre fanatic's shoes," Rodgers said of getting booed. "The things I can't understand, the things I really take personally, is when I'm driving up to the (parking lot) gate and punching in my punch code and somebody says ‘F.U.' to me. That kind of bothers me. Or when a little kid is yelling swear words at me. That kind of gets to me. The boos, they expect a high level of play and they miss Brett Favre. I understand that. But the ‘F.U.' and the little kids saying swear words to me, I don't understand that."
Rodgers said it's happened to him about a half dozen times. Asked how he responds to such things, he said:
"What can you do. Do people really feel better about themselves after they say stuff like that to me? It's disappointing. I'm not too dumb, I'm not going to say anything back to them. It's not my style, it's against my religion. The boos I can understand those, the other stuff I can't. I can't really understand that. It's not very classy."
There was a fan who was particularly loud at practice this morning and was pretty much all over coach Mike McCarthy, general manager Ted Thompson and Rodgers.
"Was that (Allen) Barbre's dad?" Rodgers joked.
Asked what he made of someone being that vocal, Rodgers said:
"I heard him yell a couple things. I'm not going to make a judgment about someone like that. It's Friday, they're here, it's a Packers practice. If you're going to root for the Jets, you don't have come to Packers practice and yell stuff like he was yelling at me. Does he feel better about himself after doing that. That's my question."
As for the kind of treatment he'll receive at games, Rodgers said he isn't too worried. He said couldn't ever see himself responding to fans the way Mike Holmgren did at halftime of a game at Lambeau Field in 1998 or flipping off the hometown fans the way Jake Plummer did in Denver severals ago.
"No," he said. "You hear it. It's been fun on the road when people are talking trash to you. You kind of like that. But when it's at home? The funniest thing was a couple of days ago when somebody was yelling at James Campen thinking he was Mike McCarthy. He was yelling something like, ‘C'mon, just apologize to Brett, c'mon McCarthy.' I was like, ‘McCarthy?' I was trying to look for coach, coach isn't even out here. I realized he was yelling at James Campen. They look like twins."
People like these **** make me ashamed to be a Packer fan.
