Aaron Rodgers went out with a bang, cutting potentially the last post-game press conference of his storied NFL career short after a question about coach Mike Tomlin’s future.
The Steelers quarterback swore and stormed off stage during his Q&A session with reporters after receiving a second straight question about the Pittsburgh coach following Monday’s 30-6 home playoff loss to the Houston Texans.
“I’ve answered that a number of times,” Rodgers said. “I’ve talked extensively about how I feel about Mike — and I just did in that f***ing answer, so.”
WARNING: Language
The four-time NFL MVP then stood up and walked off the stage.
Both Rodgers and Tomlin have faced many questions regarding their futures in the NFL and Pittsburgh, respectively.
On Monday, one of them was answered when the team announced that Tomlin was resigning as coach of the team.
He had been the longest-tenured coach in the NFL and never posted a losing regular-season record in his 19 years leading the Steelers. However, Monday’s loss was his seven straight playoff defeat.
The 53-year-old coach reportedly has at least one offer for a job on TV should he decide to totally call it quits on coaching. He also could potentially interview for one of the eight current head-coaching vacancies in NFL.
Why was Rodgers frustrated?
As for the Super Bowl champion QB, the 42-year-old Rodgers has seen his quality of play diminish in recent years while throwing for the fewest yards per game in his career in seasons where he started more than once.
Rodgers’ outburst came directly after he gave an impassioned answer to a question in which he backed Tomlin and his former coach in Green Bay, Matt LaFleur, who has been criticized heavily after the Packers playoff loss to the Chicago Bears on Saturday.
“The way that the league is covered now and the way that there’s snap decisions and the validity given to the Twitter experts and all the experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they’re talking about, to me that’s an absolute joke,” Rodgers said. “And for either those two guys to be on the hot seat is really apropos of where we’re at as a society and a league…
“Mike T. has had more success than damn near anybody in the league for the last 19, 20 years. More than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture is right, you don’t think about making a change, but there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside and obviously that sways decisions from time to time. But it’s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.”
Will Rodgers retire?
Rodgers didn’t drop any hints about his own future in the brief press conference, saying that he was “disappointed” that the season was over.
“Disappointed, obviously, such a fun year, a lot of adversity but a lot of fun,” Rodgers said. “Been a great year overall in my life in the last year and this is a really good part of that coming here and being part of this, so it’s disappointing to be here with the season over.”