Aidan Hutchinson had quite the rookie season with the Detroit Lions, who won eight of their final ten games to finish with a 9-7 record. Their final win of the 2022 season came in Week 18, on the road against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers. Leading up to the game, there was plenty of talk about how Rodgers had disrespected the Lions during the year, and how that could be some extra motivation for Detroit. According to Hutchinson, Rodgers' comments absolutely did give Detroit some extra motivation to win the game.
Aidan Hutchinson says Aaron Rodgers helped motivate Lions
During a recent interview with SB Nation, Hutchinson talked about the Lions' final game of the season against the Packers.
“It felt like it, man,” Hutchinson explained. “It’s an in-division rival, it’s ‘Sunday Night Football,’ it’s my last game of my rookie year, dude. I don’t care, I’m going all out, dude. That was my mentality, and I think that was everybody’s mentality.”
Hutchinson added that the Lions got some extra motivation from Rodgers' “sound bites.”
“Aaron (Rodgers) helped us get a lot of sound bites this year from a lot of little jabs he was poking at us,” Hutchinson explained.
Bottom Line
Rodgers opened his mouth a couple of times during the 2022 season, and Hutchinson and his teammates heard what he had to say, and they felt disrespected. Some say that trash talk does not give professional athletes any extra motivation, but, in this case, what Rodgers had to say about the Lions was heard loud and clear, and it did not help out the Packers.
