What's going on in the state of inappropriate trash talk? The following back-and-forth between Roddy White and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers couldn't serve as bulletin board material without the footnotes and annotations usually befitting 3,000 words on Grantland. Can't someone just call someone else a "bitch" and let's get on with it?
1. At some point during the off season, White, while reflecting on the Packers' dismantling of the Falcons in the NFC Divisional Round in January, said:
"We were a better team than those guys. We went out there, and we didn’t perform at our highest level."
2. Earlier this week, the AJC posed that quote to Rodgers, who fired back with a meh-tastic barb of his own:
"I don’t care to expand a whole lot on that," Rodgers said. "I just think that some of the general comments that I heard that that game was kind of a fluke maybe. I would just say that I think you need to respect your opponents. We definitely respect the Falcons.
"We were fortunate enough to go down there and play a clean game. I just felt like that maybe the respect level, just as far as those comments were concerned, maybe weren’t there at times."
3. When Rodgers' umbrage was posited to White later this week, the loose lips who once effortlessly trolled the entire city of New Orleans in a single tweet responded with his own half-assed, milquetoast retort:
"What am I supposed to say about last year," White said. "It was last year. If he wants to use that as motivation, let him use that as motivation. Anything to get you going? He’s reaching."
"We didn’t give our best effort on that day," White said. "They are a good football team. They are the champs. What can you say bad about those guys, they are 4-0. If he has to use that as motivation . . . he’s been using that for the last three weeks. It is, what it is."
White then added that upon greeting one another in the Georgia Dome this Sunday evening, White would remove his glove and give a terse slap to Rodgers about the face in protest his affront before the two would sit for high tea and discuss the foxes.
GOOD GOD, THIS IS BORING. Boxing does nothing right anymore - it's barely a sport - yet we're still treated to the occasional soundbite that one fighter will eat the other's children.
Frankly I'm stunned that this not-a-story story is dominating Packers/Falcons week. Green Bay looks like a sentient war machine that could hang twice as many on Atlanta as they did in January. The Falcons' gamble on Julio Jones has both paid off in terms of immediate on-field returns, but is so, so foreboding when you consider the amount of future picks given away as the offensive line devalues and a woeful secondary keeps piling on more woe.
But no, that's cool: Let's keep parsing cliches about who respects what about each other more, or whatever. With weak chatter like this, one can't help but think that White's off-field banter is somehow tied to his on-field performance.