Lions
- Lions RB Jamaal Williams was fined $18,566 for unsportsmanlike conduct for his touchdown celebrations in Week 18 against the Packers, though they weren’t flagged. (Tom Pelissero)
Packers
Hall of Fame QB Steve Young and Buccaneers QB Tom Brady spoke about the idea that Packers QB Aaron Rodgers is considering retirement.
“What he’s contemplating is, in my mind, a death,” Young said about Rodgers, via JoeBucsFan.com. “And who chooses death? Because when you’re the best at something in the world and then you leave the game and the next day you’re not that anymore and you find out — you know what? — I’m not actually even good at anything else. . . . So you end up wanting so much to go back to the thing I was great at. Not because you want the adulation and people to tell you that you’re great like there’s something that you’re great at. And as a human being, you don’t want to — [‘suck’, Brady said] that’s my highest and best use.”
“What [Rodgers] is contemplating is a really difficult thing, and people have no idea — having been there and felt that and have to deal with it,” Young continued. “I always tell people, ‘The next day you’re at the bottom of a cliff in a broken sack of bones. And then you gotta stand up and start doing something different. But it’s never going to be the same. It’ll never be as all-encompassing, as every bit of yourself poured out every week. There’s nothing like it. And that’s why Aaron is sitting in that spot, looking over the cliff going, ‘I don’t want to fall down there. I don’t want to go there. I don’t.’ And that’s really [how I] viscerally feel him today.”
“Steve brings out the perfect point,” Brady responded. “Those are absolutely legitimate feelings and emotions. And I think the most important thing is the day after the season, and I made this mistake, is not to decide the future.”
- Packers first-round LB Quay Walker was fined $13,261 for shoving a Lions athletic trainer and getting ejected in Week 18. (Rob Demovsky)
Seahawks
Though it came to an end earlier than the Seahawks would have liked, 2022 was still a remarkable season considering the expectations entering the year. Seahawks QB Geno Smith was one of the biggest reasons Seattle defied those, as Smith himself also rewrote the narrative surrounding his career to this point. He’s due to be a free agent this offseason and he said after the game he doesn’t want to go anywhere else.
“The town, the city, the team, Coach Carroll, the organization, they all embraced me,” said Smith via the Athletic’s Michael-Shawn Dugar. “I was a guy who probably could have been out of the league. They embraced me. I want to repay them for that.”
There will be some business to work out in the coming months with Smith’s contract. After signing for $3.5 million last offseason, Smith will make about 10 times that one way or another with the franchise tag or long-term deal. But the interest appears to be mutual between Smith and the Seahawks in signing on for 2023 and beyond.
“He’s for real,” Seahawks HC Pete Carroll said. “Geno is the real deal. He can do all of the things that a terrific quarterback does. His movement was probably more of a surprise than any, that he was so efficient with his movement. He could always throw it, but his ability to stay poised and calm throughout the season — throughout the year, with all the hype and the buildup, he could have gone south five different times, and he didn’t. He never wavered. His leadership really stood out. His voice in the locker room, his voice with our players, he had the right stuff all year. Right up until today.”
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