Aaron Rodgers gets the Ryan Tannehill treatment from Joe Philbin
Never change, Joe Philbin.
Spoiler alert: He won’t.
Philbin is who he is — no matter the quarterback.
The former Dolphins/interim Packers coach took a page from his Miami playbook Sunday, refusing to name a starting quarterback for Green Bay’s Week 16 game against the Jets during a conference call with New York media.
If this sounds familiar, it should.
He did it in 2014 to Ryan Tannehill.
But this is Aaron Rodgers we’re talking about now.
The two-time league MVP.
The guy named to his seventh Pro Bowl on Wednesday.
Now, the circumstances are of course different.
Philbin was noncommittal about Tannehill days after a poor game early in the season — prompting Tannehill to criticize his coach from the podium, saying he caused a “distraction.”
The Packers, meanwhile, are out of playoff contention, and there’s no question Rodgers will be the Packers’ starter in 2019. In fact, Rodgers later told reporters that he plans to start Sunday.
But the similarities are too rich to ignore — particularly since Philbin admitted to his players he messed up four years ago.
A day after Tannehill sounded off, Philbin told his players that as the coach, he should have handled the matter differently and was remorseful about creating a distraction, we reported at the time.
One player said Philbin indicated he would not put them in that position again. Philbin and Tannehill met in the wake of Tannehill’s comments Wednesday, and Philbin struck a similar contrite tone with his quarterback.
“It sounds very familiar,” Tannehill said, when told Wednesday what Philbin had said about Rodgers. “But it doesn’t mean a whole lot. I can relate.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2018 at 12:22 PM.
