Los Angeles Rams rookie quarterback Stetson Bennett sent a brutal message to Jim Nagy, the director of the Senior Bowl, this week.
The confrontation started with Nagy commenting on “Baby Gronk,” the youth football sensation with a father who admits he’s trained him since birth to one day play professional football. Nagy tweeted that training a kid that young doesn’t matter, and it’s more about if that child will grow to be “big and strong and fast” and be “willing to run full speed into other football players.”
Nagy concluded that if a player is none of those things, then “good luck.” He wrote that it “rarely matters when you start grooming your kids.”
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk noted that Nagy’s take is relevant for “some positions.” But for positions like quarterback, “a sudden growth spurt or some fluke incident that gives a player a rocket arm overnight won’t really matter if that player has little or no experience at reading defenses,” among other skills.
That’s when Bennett entered the fray. As a six-year player and two-time national championship quarterback with the Georgia Bulldogs, Bennett declined an invite to the Senior Bowl after Nagy rated him as a sixth- or seventh-round draft pick.
“‘Rarely matters when you start grooming your kids,'” Bennett tweeted. “Thank you for the overarching parental advice, Jim. Perhaps parents with dreams for their kids, or kids with dreams in general, should only listen to you, master king of talent evaluation. Lol—a scout who saw an opportunity…”
Nagy did not immediately respond to the diss.
