Aaron Rodgers follows up on Jumbotron-gate originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Aaron Rodgers is suddenly backtracking on his mysterious postgame interview last week.
Rodgers raised some eyebrows after Sunday’s win over Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when he implied that he saw some revealing information courtesy of the Jumbotron.
The Packers quarterback was seen engaging with head coach Matt LaFleur during the Bucs’ final drive. When asked about his apparent involvement with a series of plays for the Packers’ defense, Rodgers attempted to play coy … momentarily.
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“Sometimes you see things in the game,” he said. “Sometimes the Jumbotron shows things they probably shouldn’t show, even at home. I saw something and just passed on the information.”
Despite pitting two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks against one another, the game was surprisingly low scoring. Green Bay led 14-3 at half before being shutout in the second half while Tampa Bay slowly mounted a comeback.
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Ultimately, it was too little, too late for the home crowd at Raymond James Stadium. The Bucs’ unsuccessful two-point conversion attempt in the final seconds kept them from completing the comeback, giving the Packers a 14-12 road win.
Rodgers’ postgame comments gave rise to speculation that a team tablet -- which has famously fallen victim to one of Brady’s temper tantrums -- could have accidentally been featured on screen. Others hypothesized that Rodgers read lips and caught some pertinent play calling.
Or there’s always the possibility he didn’t see anything and it was just a passing comment, completely immaterial to the game … or so Rodgers would like us to believe.
Speaking on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesday, Rodgers tried to clarify the timeline.
“Four or five plays, somewhere, it was well before the two-point conversion -- I did see something on the Jumbotron that I … went down and relayed to Matt,” Rodgers said. “I’m not going to get into exactly what I saw, or if it even had a real impact on the play. I think that’s kind of inconsequential.”
He continued:
“It had nothing to do with the two-point conversation. There was not an image of like, you know, the Microsoft Surface or any of that on there. That would have been pretty funny, though. … You’ve still got to go out there and execute the play, and in our case stop them, but it had nothing to do with the two-point conversion.”
Confused? Yeah, so are we.
We probably won’t get any more answers out of Rodgers, at least in the near future, but Tampa Bay certainly took notice. Head coach Todd Bowles said he was meeting with the Bucs’ football operations team on Tuesday to determine what -- if any -- info Rodgers could have gathered from the big screen. Don’t be surprised if other teams across the league follow suit.
