If you’re a Packer fan with a pulse who isn’t living alone in a shack somewhere, you’ve by now read or at least heard about today’s story on the collapse of the Aaron Rodgers/Mike McCarthy relationship by Tyler Dunne for Bleacher Report. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s certainly worth your time.

As with any article that features heavy criticisms of the Packers’ star quarterback, it’s likely to be entirely dismissed by a good portion of the Packer fan base. There is an understandable tendency for people to hear criticism coming from Greg Jennings and Jermichael Finley and immediately dismiss them as being disgruntled former receivers of Rodgers’ with an axe to grind.

While Jennings and Finley have certainly come off as bitter in many of their post-Packers career interviews, I don’t think that should automatically invalidate what they should have to say in this article.

Furthermore, Tyler Dunne is a true pro, and he appears to have put an impressive amount of work into this piece, talking to numerous sources to paint a pretty holistic picture of how McCarthy and Rodgers are viewed, both positively and negatively, by other members of the Packers organization.

I won’t spend much time picking apart specific parts of the article—I’d encourage you to read it yourself and come to your own conclusions. But here are some quick thoughts I had about the story:

On unnamed sources

I think it’s extremely unfair to disqualify the validity of a story because it uses unnamed sources. It’s become unfortunately trendy to completely dismiss a story's value when sources decline to be named in the article, but journalists owe it to their sources to honor their requests to go unnamed, particularly when sensitive matters or relationships are at stake. An anti-media environment in today’s society has conditioned people to believe that “unnamed sources” are just a vehicle for reporters to insert their own made-up facts. That’s not at all true.

On Aaron Rodgers

For all the examples listed in the story, it doesn’t really provide us with any new information about Aaron Rodgers. We’ve had a number of stories detailing Rodgers’ hyper-competitiveness and occasional over-sensitivity. There are plenty of articles already out there with former teammates or others criticizing Rodgers’ leadership, claiming he refuses to accept an appropriate amount of blame, or alleging his ego is out of control.

This article provides us with some new examples of each of these claims and, presumably, some new sources making those claims. But in general, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before.

What stands out to me about responses to articles like this is that people will be very quick to discredit any quotes from Finley or Jennings, but will absolutely eat up any quotes from a Jordy Nelson or Randall Cobb that fawn all over Rodgers.

Rodgers is a complicated human being, as are most people. As a hypercompetitive, world-class superstar athlete, his personality and leadership style are going to resonate strongly with some people, and turn other people off. Whether that’s good or bad really depends on your own perspective.

You can’t invalidate the negative opinions about the guy just because you disagree with them, or because he’s a fan favorite. Ultimately, these are the guys who were in the huddle and the locker room with him every single day. Positive or negative, their opinions are valid. How you choose to respond to those opinions is up to you.

While it’s the negative perspectives of Rodgers that will inevitably get the most attention in this article, I think Dunne did a good job of balancing that with people who view Rodgers positively. He showcased that you can’t boil anybody in this scenario down to a villain. Neither Rodgers nor McCarthy are perfect human beings—their combination of strengths and faults brought the team a Super Bowl championship, as well as a pair of consecutive losing seasons.

Trying to simplify “who was at fault” or “who was the bad guy” is a fruitless endeavor, and that, to me, is the basis of Dunne’s story. It’s a depiction of two people as they are, both good and bad.

On Mike McCarthy

That being said, there was some new information about Mike McCarthy in the article. The whole massage bit is something I had certainly never heard before, and I don’t believe I’d ever heard reports that McCarthy frequently would talk himself up as a quarterback guru, wanting to be seen as “the reason” for the team’s success or talking up his time in Kansas City with Joe Montana.

Does any of this surprise me?

Not particularly, no. Maybe the bit about him becoming more withdrawn from his team. I certainly disagree with the assessment of a couple of the sources in the article saying he “gave up” on the Packers—I don’t think Mike McCarthy is capable of giving up on anybody.

But am I surprised that a Super Bowl-winning head coach who has experienced significant success in the league would also have an ego? Not at all. Nor am I surprised that McCarthy would be frustrated or even infuriated by Rodgers undermining him and starting to take greater control over the plays called on the field.

Ultimately, as far as McCarthy is concerned, Dunne’s story reinforces my viewpoint that it was absolutely time for him and the Packers to go in separate directions. But it certainly doesn’t do anything to change my feeling that McCarthy gave a ton to this team and deserves an ample amount of respect.

If you’re Rodgers, this is the kind of story you want to drop in April rather than later in the summer. It’ll be a distant memory by the time OTAs begin, let alone training camp. It’s a ceremonial dumping out of the last bits of baggage remaining from the Rodgers/McCarthy era.

There will be those who say this is a sign that Rodgers will be a nightmare for Matt LaFleur to work with, and sure, there’s a possibility of that. But there are so many things that have changed in the Packers’ organization over the last few months that I tend to feel as though it’s more likely that this is a team that will be refreshed and rejuvenated coming into next season.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe that’s blind optimism. But there are still three and a half months before the team reports to training camp. So I’m choosing to get excited about what lies ahead, rather than working myself up about what was happening between the quarterback and former coach over the last several years.

It’s time to move forward.