Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre got to play together for a couple of seasons before Favre’s departure from the team. One story that has been circulating states that Rodgers called him grandpa when he first met him and its false.
Being called a grandpa or grandma by someone who is obviously younger than you is normal these days but there is a fine line between jokes and respect. It also happens to be one that Aaron Rodgers didn’t cross with Brett Favre. Rodgers joined Favre back in 2005 so they spent a couple of seasons together. They might’ve exchanged the grandpa term once they got comfortable but Rodgers is saying that the story of he calling Favre a grandpa when they first met is not true.
“The story that was out there that I saw is completely 100 percent false,” Rodgers said on Wednesday via ESPN’s Rob Demovsky.
That story first surfaced through Bleacher Report.
The story emerged when Bleacher Report published an excerpt from a new book published by Jeff Pearlman about Favre on Oct. 14. The book, entitled, “GUNSLINGER: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre,” asserts the following happened:
Rodgers and Favre finally met on June 2, [2005], when the Packers came to town for a seven-practice organized team activity camp. Now merely a head coach (and a disgruntled one at that), [Mike] Sherman allowed Favre to skip the workouts, but that didn’t mean he would not attend. In fact, that morning Favre was alone, sitting in the team cafeteria and reading a newspaper, when Rodgers saw him in person for the first time. The new quarterback approached the old quarterback and uttered what will forever go down as the worst introductory line in the history of professional sports.
“Good morning, grandpa!”
Silence.
The irony behind this is the fact that neither player ever confirmed this happened with the author.
“Did I call him ‘Grandpa’ at any time during the three years together? Probably. But it’s in the same joking way that my man Brett Hundley called me ‘Grandpa’ three weeks ago on the field when we were doing a competitive drill.
“The story that was out there that I saw is completely 100 percent false, and I would dare anybody to test my memory on that. You guys know how my memory works. The end.”
As previously mentioned, once you’re comfortable with the person, you can use those terms of endearment but it doesn’t seem like something that Rodgers would do when he first meets someone.