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After Aaron Rodgers spent much of the offseason in a power struggle with the management of the Green Bay Packers, he suggested his play this fall would make all the drama worthwhile. Packers fans had plenty of clues that he might skip OTAs (or organized team activities), sit all preseason and still make big plays while avoiding mistakes: Over the past 16 seasons he’s been in a league of his own.
Between the return of Rodgers, the Pro Bowl backer Aaron Jones signs four-year extension and with general manager Brian Gutekunst drafting a highly regarded rookie class, the Packers roster was a potpourri of talent, perfect for what could be Rodgers’ final year at Titletown. How much had Gutekunst bet on his quarterback’s ability to capitalize? All.
Instead, the day he passed Bart Starr and Brett Favre as the longest-serving quarterback in Green Bay Packers history, it seemed like Aaron Rodgers’ time was up.
His passer rating was 36.8. His total QBR was 13.4. The all-time NFL leader in interception rate, he threw two picks, and although he was the eighth all-time passer in touchdown rate, he didn’t get it in the goals. The thousands of Packers fans in attendance for the away game had to seek out the mighty drinkers. Rodgers has only been less effective twice in his career: once, in 2014, when the Packers traveled to Buffalo in a wet and windy 38-degree December. The other was in Week 6 of last season, in a road loss to eventual Super Bowl champions.
Sunday there were no excuses. Thanks to Hurricane Ida, he was performing in front of a thin, neutral Jacksonville crowd. It was 86 degrees on the grass at TIAA Bank Stadium. He was playing against a New Orleans Saints team that had lost several key contributors at all levels of defense, accounting for 33% of their defensive starts in 2020. And yet Rodgers has never been less effective:
Rodgers completed just 54 percent of his passes and averaged just 4.75 yards per attempt on Sunday. He got the second worst quarterback score of Week 1 from Pro Football Focus, 43.3 out of 100. Randall Cobb, who was bought out by the team because Rodgers wanted him to come back, managed a take on a target.
Last year Rodgers was named MVP in part because of his red zone play; The Packers ’80 percent touchdown rate inside the 20-yard line was the highest mark since the NFL began tracking the stat in 1999. Rodgers’ red zone interception Sunday to open the second half largely killed the Packers’ chances of returning to the game.
After a week, the Packers sit last in the NFL in runs scored, yards gained and expected offensive points added. Defensively, they are 30th in points allowed, 24th in yards allowed and 29th in added points expected. They are 32nd in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Total Value (DVOA), with an astonishing -94.6% rate. almost zero value. Rodgers and the Packers didn’t just fail to establish themselves as the team to beat in the NFC on Sunday, they played like they couldn’t beat anyone in the NFL.
All of these answers make us buzz with the question: Who is Aaron Rodgers?
Recent history has taught us that when NFL quarterbacks who have defied Father Time for years finally lose that fight, they tend to lose it all at once. See Peyton Manning benched for Brock Osweiler in 2015, or Favre’s injury-ravaged 2010 final rated at 69.9 in Minnesota. Even FiveThirtyEight’s attempt in 2017 to model who will hold the NFL all-time crown by 2025 predicted Rodgers would have already retired.
But unlike Manning, Rodgers obviously didn’t lose his fastball, and he doesn’t stagger on the court between games like Favre did either. Whatever the problem with Rodgers in Week 1, his resume suggests he’s more likely to light up the Detroit Lions on Monday Night Football in Week 2 than to double Sunday’s terrible performance. Rodgers followed that Buffalo stench of 2014 by shooting 31 of 40 for 318 yards and a score in a 20-3 stomping Tampa Bay. The Bucs were also involved in the only other game Rodgers played so poorly: the Week 6 beating of last year. But of course Rodgers responded by giving the Packers a playoff rematch.
The statistical patterns bode well for Rodgers, both before and after Week 1. Football Outsiders’ DAVE metric, which is DVOA that incorporates preseason expectations into the first few weeks of the season, still has Green Bay as the eighth most efficient team, at + 8.2%. FiveThirtyEight’s own Elo projections still rank them sixth strongest NFC teams; they expect a 9-8 finish, with better odds than pairs to advance to the playoffs.
But for a team that hosted the NFC Championship game in 2020 and are facing the end of a 14-year-old Rodgers era with just one Super Bowl appearance, sneaking into the playoffs isn’t enough.
In August, Rodgers admitted it was “a championship or a disappointment” for him and the Packers. But after starting the year with the worst game of his life, what was supposed to be his last dance turned into his last danger.
Discover our latest NFL Predictions.
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