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Rodgers unimpressed by 1st career facemask penalty

Jason Getz / USA TODAY Sports

Aaron Rodgers' stiff arm to Atlanta Falcons cornerback Robert Alford that knocked off the defender's helmet may have looked pretty cool on TV, but the Green Bay Packers quarterback wasn't a fan of the result.

With the game pretty much out of reach in the third quarter of Sunday's NFC Championship Game, Rodgers scrambled to his right and extended his left arm into Alford's face as he ran out of bounds. Alford's loose helmet popped off, causing the officials to call a facemask penalty on the quarterback, the first of his career.

"I went for the stiff arm, and I’m not a stiff arm connoisseur," Rodgers said, according to ESPN's Rob Demovsky. "My thumb slipped through his facemask, his helmet was on loosely, and his helmet came off."

After checking the call on the JumboTron, Rodgers vehemently denied he deserved a penalty and demanded the flag be rescinded like what happened on an earlier play.

"I just told the ref, 'You know, he picked up the flag when they looked at the JumboTron when I scrambled and did kind of a weird in-between forward and front slide and the guy hit me in the head, and they picked up that penalty (flag),'" Rodgers said. "So I just said, 'Why don’t you look up at the JumboTron and pick up this penalty?'

"Because it obviously wasn’t an excessive blow to the head there deserving of a 15-yard penalty, in my opinion."

Rodgers already had a few calls not go his way, including the one he referenced when Alford had a flag picked up for a late hit on a questionable slide by the quarterback.

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