Following the play call doesn’t always matter when you’re catching dimes from Aaron Rodgers. But mess up one of his reads or throws, and you’re likely to get chewed out, accompanied by a death stare that makes you question your place on the field. That’s the realization former Green Bay running back Jamaal Williams came to when they were both playing for the Green Bay Packers.

“I just feel like A-Rod is just so influential to all the kids and everybody that if you’re on his team, you will make sure that you’re doing your job,” Williams shared in a recent edition of Good Morning Football. “Because you don’t want to get the A-Rod ‘you messed you stare.’ That literally is just like a (side-eye stare), like he does one of those and then he looks away, and you know, ‘Oh man, I probably ain’t gonna get this ball no more.”

When asked about his record, Williams noted he probably got that stare from Rodgers “two or three times.” He also went on to reveal Rodgers’ tendency to change plays, and how it benefited the team.

“I love that man, because one thing he gonna do is he gonna change your route,” Williams said. “If he sees that you can get that edge, he gonna be like, ‘Hey, run a flat.’ Your job has nothing to do with you running a route, but him to just say, ‘Hey, run a flat, all right?’ (Williams imitates a throw) Touchdown!

“And then, the funniest part is when you go to film, and they be like, ‘Why you run that route? Who told you to do that?” All you say is 12. Well, at the time, it was 12. And then the coach be like this (open-mouth expression).”

Now, this liberty didn’t come easy. Rodgers looked robotic as a rookie, messed up reads, and often struggled. But when Mike McCarthy became the head coach for the Packers in Rodgers’ second year, he inducted Rodgers into his ‘QB School.’ Months of weightlifting, meetings, field work, and more meetings began at 7 A.M. in February and slowly molded Rodgers into a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

After understanding McCarthy’s systems, there came a time when Rodgers would switch up plays on the field based on his reads, and as Rodgers shared the story in a recent interview, McCarthy let him do it to a certain extent.

“He could just let me go sometimes, and then sometimes he’d have to call me in on a Monday and say, ‘Listen, you changed 10 plays. Can we just go through why you changed these 10 plays?” Rodgers said. “We’d talk it out, and he’d see my side, and we always kind of met back in the middle on that. That was the beauty of the success that we had. It was a lot of push and pull. He gave me a lot of latitude, and I proved that I deserved latitude and could make it work, and when I went too far, he’d rein me back in.”

On the other hand, Rodgers’ demeanor in the face of mistakes hasn’t changed as he now leads the Pittsburgh Steelers. And Calvin Austin is the wide receiver who experienced this at least twice last season.

In Week 2 against the Seattle Seahawks, Austin tried to make a play in the end zone, but ended up breaking up a pass that was intended for Pat Freiermuth, leading to an interception. Rodgers, visibly angry, shouted at Austin. After the game, even while praising Austin, Rodgers made it clear that the pick was the receiver’s fault.

“Cal is the best kid ever, but he probably should have just stayed in the flat there,” Rodgers said. “He knows it. Or, he was kind of stealing it from Pat or just trying to catch it, put it away, score a touchdown.”

Even Austin admitted that pick was his fault after the game. Austin got 4 targets in that game and only caught one of them. It’s also worth noting that he didn’t get more than 7 targets in a single game throughout the season. Austin also had to face a furious A-Rod in Week 10 against the Los Angeles Chargers after he dropped a catch that led to another interception.

The 27-year-old WR has signed with the New York Giants this offseason, and one has to wonder if making Rodgers angry had something to do with it. In a recent interview with Go Long’s Tyler Dunne, Austin made it clear that in Pittsburgh, he had to play by Rodgers’ rules.

“With Aaron, he’s a Hall of Famer,” Austin said. “You’re going to have to do things how he wants.”

Now that Aaron Rodgers is entering his last NFL season, those death stares Jamaal Williams once feared are bound to increase. With Mike McCarthy as the new head coach for the Steelers, Rodgers is bound to make more unpredictable plays than last season. Make a mistake, and you won’t hear the end of it.