Rodgers and Suh renew salty rivalry

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh this season renewed a salty rivalry that had mostly been dormant since Suh left the Detroit Lions in March 2015, ending a five-season stretch during which the two normally faced each other twice a year as NFC North rivals.

Suh sacked Rodgers once when the Bucs hosted the Packers on Oct. 18 and also committed a roughing-the-passer penalty amid a steady stream of chirping between the two. (The penalty was wiped out by Rodgers's intentional grounding on the play.)

On Sunday, the two will meet again, this time in the NFC Championship Game.

“I don't think there will be a whole lot of conversation this week,” Rodgers said on a radio show.

Rodgers and Suh have a bit of a history since the defensive tackle joined the Lions in 2010.

“It hasn't been cordial over the years between me and Suh,” Rodgers said Oct. 20 on The Pat McAfee Show, two days after Green Bay's 38-10 loss to Tampa Bay.

“We've had some battles over the years. He got frozen feet and didn't realize he was stepping on my calf. He also stomped on one of my teammates at one point. He's been, in my time, one of the most dominant 3 techniques in the game for so many years.

“He's also played his own way. It's been the style that he's played since he got into the league. And that leads to some interesting conversations throughout the year.”

Rodgers brought up the 2014 season finale, when the Packers and Lions were jockeying for playoff seeding. (Green Bay won the game, 30-20, and finished with the NFC's No. 2 seed; the Lions fell to No. 6.) He said the conversation at the two-minute warning was “some of the all-time trash talk. It was some of the craziest, maybe scariest, most interesting two-minute warning conversation that I've been privy to. That's just kind of how it's been over the years.”

The “frozen feet” incident Rodgers mentioned also took place during that Week 17 game in 2014, when Suh stepped on Rodgers's calf.

The NFL initially suspended Suh for one game, which would have kept him out of Detroit's first-round game against the Cowboys, but his suspension was overturned upon appeal and he merely was fined US$70,000.

Suh said during his appeal that it was so cold he couldn't feel his legs and didn't know he had stepped on Rodgers.

Suh also stomped on Packers centre Evan Dietrich-Smith during a 2011 game, earning an ejection and a two-game suspension without pay.

In 10 games against the Packers with Rodgers, Suh has three sacks, with one of them coming in his first game against Green Bay, in October 2010.