If anyone knows a thing or two about comments made to or in the media being taken and run with out of context or betrayal, it’s Jay Gruden (wink wink).
All jokes about Jay’s Twitter aside, Grant did have an interesting question when Gruden joined him and Danny Monday: what to make Tom Rinaldi, on the FOX broadcast of Packers-Niners Saturday night, saying that Matt LaFleur told them ‘when (kicker Anders) Carlson goes out there, I just pray.’
Jay hadn’t heard it, but indeed, that was something the Packers’ head coach had apparently said, off the record, about his kicker who has missed the most total kicks in the NFL this season.
“Apparently, that was a comment that LaFleur had made during their weekly sit down at the boardroom table, kind of off the record conversation,” Grant told Gruden, “and LaFleur, when he was talking about this with the media, said that was extremely disappointing that that's how it was portrayed. He said, ‘I've been doing this, been part of production meetings ever since I became a coordinator, and I've never had an experience like that, but it is what it is.’ He said he basically was joking about it, like it was a funny comment in passing.”
But given how it came out, is th FOX team to blame for violating the ‘unwritten rules’ of the record, or is nothing safe anymore?
“Yeah, that's not right for somebody to bring that back out in public,” Gruden said. “You know, when you say something behind closed doors and you're just kind of talking jokingly around, you know, especially about a player like that, that’s not right. You know, I've said some things before as well, behind closed doors, and hopefully it hopefully doesn't get out. A lot of it has, but, you know, it's unfortunate.”
Clearly that’s a nod to his running duel with RG3, and Jay wouldn’t play along (or did so coyly) when G&D needled him about that…but then again, when it comes to kickers?
“Sometimes, when the kicker does go out there, a lot of times you do say a little quick little prayer to yourself, because you hate kicking field goals number one, and number two, you just never know,” Gruden said. “You got a center, you got the holder, you gotta block for the thing, and then you gotta make the thing. It's never an easy deal when you're kicking a field goal, unless you're Baltimore with Justin Tucker or some of these other teams with these unbelievable kickers.”
