Greg Olsen was doing the best he could. But as reporters peppered the Carolina Panthers tight end with questions about former teammate Greg Hardy, you could see his patience thinning.
Finally, it wore out.
"This is the 15th question you've asked about him," Olsen said.
He wound up answering the question, though. That's because Olsen understands weeks like this are part of the gig, both for teams and media.
Sure, the Panthers' trip to Dallas will be their first-ever Thanksgiving Day game, which will come in front of their largest TV audience since the 2003 Super Bowl. And, yeah, at 10-0 they're one of the best stories of the season with a quarterback who's a legit MVP candidate.
Despite all that, the 'Hardy faces former team' storyline is impossible to ignore.
Give Jason Garrett credit for trying.
"Guys, I don’t want to make this call about Greg Hardy," the Cowboys coach told Carolina-based media Tuesday.
He faced just five Hardy-related questions on the conference call, all of them fair and newsworthy. But if Olsen's patience was thin after just a few minutes, imagine Garrett's after a few months of Hardy headaches.
"We did our due diligence and we decided to sign him and he is part of our football team," Garrett said. "We’ll leave it at that."
Of course, with distracting headlines plaguing Hardy's time with the Cowboys, many are rightfully wondering how Dallas' defines due diligence.
Ron Rivera understands what it's like to be grilled and then second-guessed about Hardy. With his enormously talented former pass rusher now out of sight, he only has to have him in mind for a few days of deflections.
"When you watch him on tape, he shows up, as expected. But the truth of the matter is, we're playing the Cowboys, and he's one of 11 defensive starters," Rivera said.
As a coach and man who gives the benefit of the doubt while others play judge and jury, Rivera had a soft spot for Hardy, even through last year's rocky ride. So did a handful of Panthers players.
Many who had gotten to know Hardy after he was drafted by Carolina in 2010 believed his legal troubles didn't define him. When his domestic violence trial was thrown out in February, multiple influential teammates went to bat for him in conversations with owner Jerry Richardson. But once the NFL's investigation began turning up red flags, any consideration for bringing Hardy back quickly disappeared.
"Greg Hardy is a guy that you flat out want on your football team," linebacker Thomas Davis said. "He's a guy that's a game-changer. He can go out and totally wreck a game plan if you allow him to.
"So of course we went and spoke up for him trying to get him back. But a few details came out with his whole situation and unfortunately we weren't able to get him back."
Because of his actions in Dallas, which include blowing up on an assistant coach and teammates, it's easy to forget Hardy was popular in the Panthers' locker room. He didn't hang out much with teammates, and he was certainly quirky, but he wasn't the guy who's become demonized in the national eye the past few months.
"He’s done a really good job in our locker room of presenting himself as a good teammate," Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo claimed. "I think a lot of times the people who are in the locker room, we get to see people on a daily basis and what you find sometimes is you can create relationships getting to know someone day in and day out and how they compete and how they play."
Hardy still has plenty of friends in Carolina, from Davis to cornerback Josh Norman to defensive end Charles Johnson. And it isn't just a defense thing. Fullback Mike Tolbert said he talks to Hardy "all the time."
"He's very excited just to prove to everybody, especially the Panthers, that he still can play and it was a mistake letting him go," Tolbert said of a recent conversation over text
But if Hardy thinks ability is why he's no longer in Carolina, then he's as delusional as some believe.
When asked how he'd summarize Hardy's time with the Panthers, Rivera put it well:
"He did some good things for us as a football player."