Greenway reacts to comments he made about 'super-duper drunk fans'

Mount Vernon native Chad Greenway made headlines this week for something other than his league-leading 123 tackles.

Sunday, after a critical division loss to the Green Bay Packers, the Minnesota Vikings’ linebacker was discussing with reporters how important this weekend’s NFC North divisional game against Chicago will be. He was asked whether Sunday’s noon game essentially became the game that will determine the season.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it is. You look at it with the travel coming up after that, why not call it that? And we have to play accordingly. I mean our fans have to show up accordingly, which we know they will. Hopefully, they’re super-duper drunk,” he said, according to the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.

Greenway’s comment received a barrage of media criticism from outlets like the Huffington Post, Fox Sports and Pro Football Talk.

ESPN personalities Rob Parker, Skip Bayless and Steven A. Smith also chimed in during the show Thursday morning. Some have even said that Greenway should be fined for urging fans to drink.

On Thursday, Greenway spent time discussing his word choice. The former Iowa Hawkeye explained his comments in further detail in a radio interview with ESPN-1000 in Chicago.

“Obviously, I could have used some more responsible words,” he told host Tom Waddle and Marc Silverman. “I think the people that know me, the beat writers included, know that I said that sort of tongue-in-cheek. I just wanted the fans at home to be loud like they always are. I think just trying to drive that point home. I probably got a little loose with my words. Obviously, I should have been a little more responsible with it. It was said so what do you do?”

In a column written Thursday by Star Tribune Vikings/NFL reporter Dan Wiederer suggested that Greenway’s comments were not that big a deal and lacked context.

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