Pretty much everyone would tell you Aaron Rodgers isn’t having a very good season, this year.
There was that 77-yard clunker at Denver. Rodgers has looked uneasy in the pocket and he’s been uncharacteristically inaccurate at times. That interception at Carolina was totally a boneheaded play, especially when you saw how wide open Randall Cobb was. Sixteen points at home against the Lions is unacceptable.
All of those things are very un-Aaron Rodgers.
That is to say, they’re not up Aaron Rodgers’ standards and they don’t meet what everyone else has set as expectations for the guy.
But let’s stop and consider some things for a moment.
First, Rodgers has thrown for 2,270 yards, 21 touchdowns and three interceptions through nine games. That puts him on pace for 4,035 yards, 37 touchdowns and five interceptions.
Is that a subpar season?
Not by any measuring stick we’re aware of.
The Red Rifle, Joey Flacco, Teddy Butthole? They’d kill their own mother and eat her carcass for that year right there.
Still, if things continue as they are, everyone will say Rodgers had a bad year.
Second, this “bad year” is being done with a supporting cast that has largely been garbage.
Let’s throw out the offensive line for the purposes of this discussion.
Like, you can literally go ahead and throw them out as far as we’re concerned. Say, out of a moving car traveling at 120 miles per hour. Or perhaps an airplane, sans parachute.
The Packers currently have no receivers on pace to reach 1,000 yards.
Randall Cobb is the closest, currently on pace for 940 yards. Cobb is a nice player, but we’ve all seen he’s not a No. 1 receiver. Davante Adams is beginning to look like a bust. James Jones is a No. 3 or 4 receiver at this point in his career.
Plus, you have a tight end who can’t even average 8 yards per reception.
Not a single one of these guys has been able to create any separation by themselves for weeks.
Third, the Packers have no running game to speak of.
Eddie Lacy was, for the most part, M.I.A. before being demoted last week. James Starks is a hell of a backup, but he doesn’t create yards after contact like Lacy does. The Packers almost need a bruiser like that due to their subpar offensive line.
Who the guy is doesn’t matter anyway, since the Packers refuse to run the ball at all.
As such, you shouldn’t be surprised that neither back will reach 1,000 yards this season, barring some sort of miracle.
So here you’ve got an offense that quite obviously lacks a single playmaker. Or maybe a nicer way of saying that would be, it’s an offense that quite obviously lacks an individual who is making plays.
That is, except for 12.
The bottom line is, we’re all expecting him to take a bunch of clowns who aren’t playing very well (or aren’t very good, period), elevate their games and lead the Packers to greatness.
But even Jordan needed Pippen.
Rodgers lost his Pippen when Jordy Nelson went down during the preseason.
We’ve been beating Rodgers down just as hard as anyone this year, but when you consider the evidence as a whole, it paints a pretty clear picture.
The Green Bay Packers currently have one great player on offense and, even though he’s quite possibly a transcendent player, not even he can make up for the subpar play and mediocrity around him.
The people who constructed this team and thought otherwise were sadly mistaken.
Rodgers has had moments where he could have played better, but the reality is he’s doing a hell of job with the hand he’s been dealt.