Mike Florio ,
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Saturday is sometimes the day to catch up on the things that got lost in the shuffle of the week that was. Here’s one that slipped through the cracks.
On Tuesday, Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared on Steelers defensive lineman Cam Heyward’s podcast . And Heyward mentioned his comments from March about the pursuit of the future Hall of Famer.
“ I ain’t doing that darkness retreat ,” Heyward said. “I don’t need any of that crap. Either you want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler or you don’t. That’s simple, that’s the pitch. If you want me to recruit, that’s the recruiting pitch. Pittsburgh Steelers — if you want to be part of it, so be it. If you don’t, no skin off my back.”
Early in the podcast appearance, Heyward tried to tell Rodgers that his comments “were taken out of context.” (They most definitely were not.) Heyward then asked Rodgers how he felt about that.
Rodgers said this: “I was hurt, yeah. I was hurt. You didn’t reach out, and you just wanted to make a statement in the media. You had a preconceived notion of who I was, obviously.”
Rodgers was smiling as he said it, and Heyward laughed. And while the first part (“I was hurt”) seemed like a joke, the back end was far more pointed.
And it wasn’t new. Rodgers loves to complain about people having “preconceived notions” about him. At some point, maybe he’ll realize those preconceived notions are conceived from the things he previously said publicly. Those who don’t personally know him will develop impressions of him, based on his comments.
Most people are different in public than they are in private. But those who have a public persona — and who add to it with interviews and podcast appearances — can’t complain when people who don’t personally know them draw conclusions.
Well, they can. And the rest of us can say they shouldn’t.
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