If you’re on Twitter today, you’ve probably seen this, touting how great Aaron Rodgers has been of late.
The Packers are 1-4 over the past five weeks.
Even though Aaron Rodgers has been absolutely on 🔥 pic.twitter.com/ewtMmz6Evj
— NFL GameDay (@NFLGameDay) November 27, 2016
Well, that’s swell and naturally, some fans are passing this around because look at how great Aaron Rodgers is!
The key there, of course, is that the Green Bay Packers are 1-4 in those games. And here’s the real the story. The reason these numbers look so great isn’t necessarily because Rodgers is so great. They look so great because the Packers have almost completely abandoned the running game.
The Packers have run the football just 93 times in those five games. Only 72 of those runs were planned, meaning 21 were passing plays where the quarterback scrambled.
Meanwhile, Rodgers has thrown the ball 229 times in that span. So the Packers are passing around 78 percent of the time over that span.
Plus, the Packers have also been down double digits in three of those five games. They had to throw the football out of necessity.
Sure, Rodgers isn’t the problem like he was early in the season. However, he’s attained these numbers because the Packers have been bad, they’ve had try to make up large deficits and they’ve questionably abandoned the running game almost entirely.
Put Blake Bortles on the Packers and he’d probably lead the league in these categories over the last five games as well.