Is blaming a football player's lack of productivity on an unknown factor involving a relationship with his beloved fair?
That topic came into discussion when former Green Bay Packers offensive tackle Mark Tauscher, an analyst for 620WTMJ, joined "Wisconsin's Afternoon News" Wednesday.
Tauscher and host John Mercure discussed the article "Five reasons why Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is struggling" by ESPN's Rob Demovsky.
Specifically, they referenced this part:
Possible off-field issues?: A longtime NFL agent told me recently that when he sees one of his top-performing clients play differently, as Rodgers has of late, the first thing he wonders is if something is going on in his personal life. There’s no indication that Rodgers’ relationship status has changed. Lions reporters said they spotted Rodgers’ girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, at Lambeau Field on Sunday. Sometimes it's easy to forget that professional athletes have lives away from the field, and you never know what could be going on in their personal lives.
"For Rob Demovsky, who's best I know, never played a snap in the NFL, I could be wrong...to be writing this thing, I don't know about Olivia Munn, I don't know about their status, but maybe this is one of the reasons. Isn't that irresponsible?" John asked.
Tauscher said he had "no clue of Rob's article or anything of that nature," but added this.
"If you're going to write pieces, you'd better have some backup with it. I think that goes for every line of business. If you're going to accuse somebody or do something, there had better be something to back it up. Otherwise, you're just 'National Enquiring' it," he said.
"If all that stuff is the case and you have some facts to back things up, I still don't know how you write that, but it comes with the nature of how things go now. When you're a star quarterback, everybody wants to know about all aspects of your life, and that's something, I'm sure, star players wish didn't happen, but that's the reality of this situation."
Tauscher explained, however, that personal situations can - but don't always - come into play with on-field performance.
"Compartmentalizing when you're playing football, your focus has to be so strong in order to go out there to perform at a high level, that it's really tough when you have other stuff going on, but you can do it," said Tauscher.
