There was bad blood brewing between Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre before Rodgers ever took a snap for the Packers.
In Favre’s biography, “Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre,” as excerpted by Bleacher Report, author Jeff Pearlman recounts the quarterbacks’ first meeting, in which Rodgers reportedly kicked things off with an insult at the veteran.
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.
Rodgers disputed that version of events Wednesday — even citing his famed photographic memory — but couldn’t deny he had tossed a few insults at the aging Favre during their fraught time as teammates.
“I’ll just say this: The first time I met Brett was on the practice field, and I could barely get a sentence out of, ‘Hello, my name is Aaron,'” Rodgers said, via ESPN. “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.”
Neither Favre nor Rodgers spoke with Pearlman for the book. Then-backup quarterback Craig Nall backed Pearlman’s account of the frosty introduction.
“Brett couldn’t believe that,” Nall said. “It was like, ‘Grandpa? Who the hell are you?'”
The Favre-Rodgers relationship long has been strained. There was tension as Rodgers, a first-round pick out of Cal, sat on the bench for three years while Favre wrapped up his tenure in Green Bay. But Rodgers made an appearance at Favre’s induction into the Hall of Fame over the summer, signaling a thaw that won’t be helped by revisiting old wounds.