I don't get when people keep saying the whole "they need to focus on the game and not on twittering" thing. Does anybody seriously believe that taking 2 minutes to type a message to the internet really takes away from football abilities at all? That just seems pretty absurd to me. These guys are people and they have free time just like all (or most I guess) of us do. Why bother worrying about what they do with it?

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It kind of sounds like Nick needs to go take VR's anger management class from the Back Alley. When a player uses celebration as Barnett does, he leaves himself open to scrunity by other players and fans. It is okay to be boisterous if your play consistently backs it up, but in Nick's case that is just not warranted. All I know is Barnett is lucky Uncle Ted is frugal and has cap space.

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I actually agree with Steve. Who cares what these guys say? We're making mountains out of molehills.

Keep in mind, they're 20-something. Geez, I was stupid when I was in my 20s. I'm thinking you older folks are thinking the same thing and you people in your 20s will look back at your 20s and wish you had more brains.

That is just a fact. Humans aren't born mature. Maturity takes time.

The other thing, a lot of us here are failed athletes and we keep following the game because we love it. We sometimes live partially vicariously through our favorite players. Let's switch sides. Let's just pretend YOU made it while Nick and Aaron didn't, and YOU are a starting player on the Packers. Could YOU keep your cool after a painful loss like that? Maybe so. Maybe not. If you had access to an outlet like twitter or a press conference and people kept saying you suck, would you say all the right things? Maybe so. Maybe not.

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I am 24 so I am still at that "gaining maturity" stage in my life. I am still trying to make it somewhere.
Right now, I can have a twitter account and I might have a measley 20-30 people following me. Those 20-30 people are probably people I see once a week or talk to ever so often. I think Barnett has over 17,000+ followers. His 17,000+ followers care about what he writes. People idolize the dude.

Anyways, we are making mountains out of molehills with this as someone stated. Barnett is a good guy and I can understand the emotional side of things. Just play better, please.

His celebration reminded me of the USC linebacker on Saturday when he lit the runningback up on like the 5 yard line...anyone catch that? Nice hit bud but ummm, game is pretty much over.

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It's clear here from Barnett's back-pedalling that he certainly regrets his outbursts on Twitter. But scrutiny is part and parcel with being a successful athlete. They are also professionals, doing a job for which they are rewarded handsomely. I expect them to carry themselves as members of the Green Bay Packers with more tact in the future.

Especially for a position such as linebacker, it seems players must play with emotion to perform well. But they need the self-control to turn it off when they're no longer on the field.

It's one thing for Barnett to say that the Packers played woefully. It's another to request the fans to pucker their lips. It's just another mistake in a whole slew of them the past 24 hours.

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+1

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+1 - good call. We seem to expect 20-year-old men who've not been asked to do anything but become good at playing football to magically morph into well-spoken ambassadors of the game, and that expectation is unrealistic.

Twitter is problematic because it removes the filter and we're exposed to young men acting like - young men. That it's being fixated on by the media is more the issue than Nick's hot-headed-ness (or that of any other player), IMO.

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It doesn't bother me what Rodgers said, because I believe he was referring to the "fans" that were rooting for him to fail. He put up with a lot of bullshit last year, and I'm surprised he handled himself as well as he did.

There were people that would actually wait for him in the parking lot just to tell him how much they hated him and how they hoped he would fail. THATS who he was referring to.

+1

I'm not the only one who understood.

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I actually love Rodgers comment. He said exactly what I was thinking for him. He was getting ready to be the QB for our team. But those who could not then and some still can't let Brett go, never gave him a chance. As any player for this team, he should have been given the benefit of the doubt until he shows he cannot play, which he still hasn't done.

Barnett, needs to scale it back. His celebration after basically the one play he made all game was over kill. He made a tackle and that was it, wasn't even a great tackle.

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