GREEN BAY – Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and receiver Davante Adams have been named the 2020 Tom Mulhern Stand-Up Guy Award recipients, by the Green Bay chapter of the Professional Football Writers of America.
The annual award is presented to the Packers players voted to have best helped reporters covering the team to do their jobs effectively. Previous winners include defensive tackle Kenny Clark, kicker Mason Crosby, and left tackle David Bakhtiari.
Both Rodgers and Adams spoke with reporters over Zoom twice a week this season, with the two-time MVP quarterback also addressing the Green Bay media corps over the phone following the 2020 NFL Draft.
As strange as the season felt due to COVID-19 restrictions, Rodgers believed it was important to provide media and fans a glimpse into what daily life was like inside Lambeau Field.
"I love telling stories and I appreciate the opportunities through the questions this year to tell those stories and to give you a little glimpse behind the veil that is the NFL," Rodgers said.
"I think that's what makes our game so interesting to people is there's so much unknown. There's not the camera in the locker room. There's not as much mic'd up access. So to give you guys a little peek behind the curtain, I think is always a good thing."
Adams joins former Packers cornerback Tramon Williams as a two-time recipient after previously winning the award in 2017. The four-time Pro Bowler is closing in on several franchise records entering Sunday's regular-season finale in Chicago.
When asked last month about whether he could've ever believed making it this far in football, Adams went so far as to pull out his phone to show a photo of himself from his grade-school yearbook where he wrote "NBA or NFL" as his childhood dream.
"You can ask anybody who knows me ... I try not to go through the motions with anything. I feel like you waste your time doing that and everybody else's time," Adams said. "If I was a person on the outside watching, I would love to see guys show a picture of themselves when they're 8 or 9 years old saying they want to go to the league and then being able to fulfill that dream. That type of stuff, I've always thought is interesting. You usually don't get to have that type of behind-the-scenes look."
The Stand-Up Guy Award is named after the late Tom Mulhern, a former Packers and Wisconsin Badgers beat writer for the Wisconsin State Journal and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel who passed away at age 56 in October 2014.
Previous Stand-Up Guy recipients
- 2014: Jordy Nelson, Tramon Williams
- 2015: No award given
- 2016: T.J. Lang, Micah Hyde
- 2017: Davante Adams, David Bakhtiari
- 2018: Kenny Clark
- 2019: Mason Crosby, Bryan Bulaga, Tramon Williams
- 2020: Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams
