File this under “To The Surprise Of No One.”
The Green Bay Packers and guard T.J. Lang didn’t exactly part on good terms. As we found out earlier this week, Lang was insulted by the way the team handled him during free agency.
Now Lang is a member of his hometown Detroit Lions, one of the Packers’ NFC North rivals and the team they beat for the division title in 2016.
All of this sets up for the obvious.
The Lions face the Packers twice a season, the former Packers player has no allegiance to his former team because of the way they treated him and, being that he played eight seasons there, he knows all about their inner workings.
“I was talking to a defensive line coach actually just yesterday. He was asking me, ‘I kind of felt like you guys knew what we were doing.’ I just gave him some tips,” Lang said. I mean, we kind of studied film. It was a great conversation because he’s like, ‘We need to do a great job of switching it up.’ I bring a little bit of knowledge to obviously some keys and tips of what I’ve seen throughout the years…
“But yeah, like I said, I’m kind of excited to share that information with those guys, and also on the flip side, learn something from them, too. How they used to attack same and what they think about going against offensive linemen. Yeah, it’s going to be pretty positive and it’s only going to make us better.”
Obviously, this is bound to happen when you let one of your veteran players sign with a division rival.
It’s also bound to happen when you anger or disrespect a veteran player before they do so. Lang won’t be the first former Packer to offer advice to the Lions on how to beat Green Bay.
Remember, Brett Favre once did the same thing and he didn’t even play for the Lions.