AJ Hawk: League Office Will Inform Packers LB the Joke Is on Him

A.J. Hawk said his middle-finger salute after sacking St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford on Sunday was merely a running joke among his Green Bay Packers teammates.

Unfortunately for him, few understood his joke, including Packers cornerback Charles Woodson.

Hawk, who apparently flipped the bird to the Packers sideline after the sack, has yet to explain his actions on Sunday, and Woodson was left to ponder on The Jim Rome Show on Monday.

Said Woodson, via Pro Football Talk:

"

“No, I had not heard about it. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that. From what I heard it was some kind of inside joke but I have no clue. I don’t know who else knew about it either. I guess there were a couple people who knew about it but it caught everybody else off guard. So the joke’s on us I guess.”

"

Indeed it is.

Hawk didn't explain which teammates were involved in the joke, nor did he break down what's so funny about flipping off his own team.

He did, however, give us the well-known cliche of, "I got caught up in the emotion of the game."

Said Hawk, via The Journal Sentinel, "I don't get a whole lot of sacks, so I was excited. I just got up and it happened."

Well, an explanation may not have saved Hawk anyway for frightening children, but you can bet the league office will laugh at him as it likely collects a handsome sum.

As the 2010 Pro Bowler will discover, no amount of one-fingered salutes can make up for the loss of thousands of dollars. Even if it felt good for him to do so at the moment.

Now, I'm not an expert on jokes involving middle fingers, but it appears to me that there was no joke in the first place and Hawk was just fired up (kind of like a Jim Harbaugh "slap-grab handshake").

In that sense, Hawk should just admit that he's a crazy linebacker in the NFL, which would be more believable. He may as well go out in a ball of fire, right?

One thing's for sure: plenty of inquisitive folks are looking up "middle-finger joke" on Wikipedia, right about now.