AJ Hawk Says Packers Handled His Release With Class

AJ Hawk was a guest on his own podcast on Wednesday, where he was interviewed by his older brother Ryan. Though one may expect the former Packers linebacker to be bitter at being cut after spending nine years with the team, that really wasn’t the case at all. Hawk had nothing but good things to say about the Green Bay organization, from the front office to the strength and conditioning staff to his teammates, and said that he was not blindsided by his release because he was kept in the loop throughout the process.

The whole conversation is pretty interesting, and reinforces that there are so many things that we don’t think about the players’ lives during these transactions. You can see it dawn on Hawk that he’d have to sort out his housing situation — he’d been renting in Green Bay the past four years so he could be nimble if and when the axe dropped — and deal with other logistics like getting his cable and Internet accounts sorted out.

Hawk was a very good Green Bay Packer. Getting drafted fifth overall, after the freakish college career at Ohio State and Combine performance, he was expected to be like our Urlacher, which obviously didn’t happen. But, nine years is a hell of a long tenure for one team in the NFL, and his ability to stay on the field — he missed just two games — was astounding. Durability, and your team’s not having to mitigate the difference between a starter and a backup, is a more important trait in a player than is necessarily recognized. Hawk has the most tackles in franchise history, and he’ll be signing autographs at Stadium View for decades.

As for Hawk’s podcast, it’s flown comparatively under the radar this season, but he’s landed some really solid guests, including former wrestler Bill Goldberg, CBS’s James Brown, Jake Plummer, Kirk Herbstreit, Joe Buck, John Daly, and Bret Michaels. It’s presumable that Hawk will catch on somewhere in the NFL this offseason, but when his playing career is finished it’s a solid bet that he’ll work in media after his retirement.