“Obviously, I would love to go to the Packers,” said Taylor Heinicke, a guest on the Pat McAfee Show Thursday morning.
But, of course, context is always crucial. So what was the context of Heinicke’s declaration?
McAfee had seconds earlier conveyed Heinicke is now a free agent, and so he inquired, “Have you thought about potential landing destinations, what you are looking for?”
Heinicke then qualified, “Yeah, I’m not going to say any teams.” Then Heinicke proceeded to name the Packers, clarifying, it’s been a childhood dream of mine to play for the Packers.”
“Obviously, I wanna be a starter next year, but being a backup QB in the NFL is probably one of the best jobs in America”. This is from a guy who was taking classes, living off of his sister’s couch in 2020. So Heinicke has not forgotten from where he has come and still possesses perspective.
McAfee noticed Heinicke’s cap and inquired, “What’s the cap here? Reign and Destiny? I see on the side of it, ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’.”
Heinicke replied, “Guy on our team, Marken Michel, the brother of Sony Michel, he’s a practice squad receiver, but he made his own clothing line, and he started wearing these hats around the facility. All the guys, the coaches loved them; they got a bunch of hats. You know me, losing my hair, I wear this all of the time.”
McAfee looking to get a good quote out of Heinicke, asked, “Are you excited to get out of that Commanders building and get past the drama? To which Heinicke simply set the record straight, “I might be back there. I would love to be back there.”
PM: Is that something that has been chatted about?
TH: We’ll see. You know, again, a lot of moving parts.
Suddenly McAfee interrupted, “Did you ever feel disrespected by them or Ron Rivera?” McAfee then talked of how there was not success, then success when Heinicke played, and again no success when he was benched.
While it is true the Commanders were winning with Heinicke, it is also just as true that the Commanders went winless in four straight games (0-3-1) Heinicke started. Somehow McAfee overlooked this was part of the equation for Ron Rivera to compute in his decision-making.
Heinicke handled it like a champ, replying, “I’m not going to say I felt disrespected. It was kind of the communication of how it all went down I wasn’t very happy about.”
PM: “You knew going into that game (49ers) you had a short leash?”
TH: “I had friends send me articles.”
Here are the entire 19 minutes of the Heinicke segment with McAfee.