As much as he loves football, the NFC Championship game is causing a little bit of turmoil for St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright. Over the years, he has gotten to know Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. But Wainwright is also a Georgia native, who grew up a fan of the Atlanta Falcons–although he admits being drawn to another NFL team in the mid-90’s.

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St. Louis Cardinals Winter Warm Up“I have to be honest, I switched to the Jaguars,” shared Wainwright recently at the Winter Warm-Up. “Jacksonville–that’s one hour from my house. We’d go down to Jaguar games. They had a great team–Fred Taylor, Keenan McCardell, Jimmy Smith, and Mark Brunnell. Big Tony Boselli. It was a fun team–they almost got to the Super Bowl one year.

“So I sort of jumped ship on the Falcons, honestly. But I went to Lambeau Field this year and that is–you know I’ve been to some great college football games. I’ve been to Sanford Stadium plenty of times to see Georgia play, big rival games. But the experience at Lambeau Field was such a unique–it was the best football experience I’ve ever had. I had just such an amazing time, so I’m sort of a Packers fan to be honest with you.”

In addition, Wainwright is a big fan of how Rodgers handled the slow start the Packers got off to this year.

“They started off this year, I think they were like 5-6 and the media was–maybe even 4-6, and they were just like Aaron Rodgers–he’s not the same, he’s not a great competitor anymore, he’s a second tier quarterback, and the Packers are done. If you remember what he said–he said ‘relax’. Just real like, ‘I got this’ and we’re going to run the table. And they did it. He backed it up.

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“What I love about it, during that whole process you look in his eyes–he meant it. I’m a big fan of people when they say stuff, you can look through them and kind of like ‘that dude’s for real, he believes that.’ And I’m the opposite of guys who you can tell, it’s kind of just for fluff–‘oh yeah, we’re going to run the table’ and then there’s just all these negative thoughts in their head you can kind of see and read. But there’s none of that with him right now. He’s very confident, you can see in his passing.”

Kind of like a certain right-handed pitcher when he takes the mound…

photo credit: Matthew Emmans, Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports, Bill Greenblatt/UPI