How Much Impact Might the Media Have on Actual Performance?

Okay, so I missed last night's preseason game, so when I woke up I made my coffee and clicked into the Journal-Sentinel-Press-Gazette. From the headlines I could only conclude that Aaron Rodgers was terrible, mostly due to a lack of playing time, which the article concluded meant that the Packer offense will be terrible again this year. Then I saw another headline that indicated Adams is dropping passes again and it's become a terrible epidemic for him.

Buried in each article were facts - Rodgers led the team to a touchdown in his brief appearance, and Adams dropped one pass but soon after made a great, contested catch. And one of the articles reminded us all that the preseason games mean nothing.

I didn't title this thread "does the media affect players?" Because the media affects us all. The media is a good part of the reason politicians can make patently false claims - outrageous, ridiculous-on-the-surface claims - that much of the public ends up believing ( one non-partisan example: that Americans have a right to privacy).

So football players and coaches can say all they want that they don't pay attention to the media, but you can never watch a single episode of The Bachelor yet you probably still know what it is. It's inescapable.

So how much and in what ways might all this mostly-ridiculous Internet opining from the JSPG affect players and coaches? Is the media's incessant carping getting into Davante Adams's head? Is MM going to run even more fast tempo no huddle because PBMax keeps calling for MM to let it go?