Cris Collinsworth Said No One's Been 'More Honest' Than Aaron Rodgers, and the Internet Asks to Speak to His Manager
In a way, I can kind of sympathize with Cris Collinsworth in this moment. After a while, a network football analyst starts to run out of superlatives to describe Aaron Rodgers. As great a language as English is, it does have its limitations. And there are only so many ways you can praise a man for his arm strength, his accuracy, his mobility, his decision making, his running ability, his ability to make throws on the run, his leadership, his high IQ, and his general overall spectacularness. After all, there's only one word in the language for "love." Which means you have to use the same verb to say "I love you, Mom" as you do to say, "I love the way Aaron Rodgers anticipates Davante Adams' route and has the ball in the air break before he makes his break." When we all know the feelings for Aaron Rodgers' perfectly delivered spirals are much, much more profound than any bond between child and mother.
So it was inevitable that someone would eventually have to go deep into the dictionary to find another way to sing Aaron Rodgers' praises. Just to keep it fresh, if for no other reason. Collinsworth just happened to be the first one to single him out for his honesty in 2021. Which apparently has been above and beyond the honesty of all other souls living among us.
And the thing is, at a moment in history where every topic is a potential firestorm and the Covid vaccine in particular is a keg of gunpowder sitting on top of dry kindling, praising Aaron Rodgers for his candid truth-telling after he, let's just say, kept his own council on his status:
... that has not sat well with large segments of the public since Collinsworth said it. Especially those segments of the public who will not rest until everyone with vaccine hesitancy is called out.
So yes, it's been ugly on the Twittersphere for NBC's top football analyst. The memes and GIFs are flying from all directions like ninja stars:
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And that's just a small sample of the people keeping it light. The vast majority are demanding apologies and retractions and heads rolling down the stairs from the broadcast booth. In the interest of time, I'll skip those and let you search for yourself.
By no means am I making a judgment call on this. It's just that when you're going to go out of your way to praise someone for honesty and you pick the one guy most associated with being less than truthful about the most hot button topic of our times, it's the equivalent of climbing down off the subway platform to put your arms around the third rail. That was the choice Cris Collinsworth made. And the noise he's listening to today is not going to die down any time soon. If he doesn't completely disown this during his next SNF slide, I'll be amazed.
P.S. I've heard some experts like Dr. Drew Pinsky say that we are very close to getting a therapeutic approved that will treat the virus and put all this behind us. If true, you have to wonder if the social damage all this has caused will ever be cured.