You probably recall when Aaron Rodgers threw one of his four touchdowns against the Detroit Lions and then head-butted guard T.J. Lang and yelled, “I’m back!” Well, as we cautioned after that game, no one should be jumping to that conclusion.
In fact, at the quarter mark of the season, it’s clear Rodgers is not only not back, but he’s just bad. We’re not talking about bad for Aaron Rodgers because we all know the man has set a high bar, especially during his two MVP seasons. We’re talking about bad, period.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve actually been watching and not blindly following. Rodgers regression started toward the end of the 2014 season, his last truly good campaign. In fact, we all got a great preview of what was to come in the 2014 NFC Championship game. It was a game full of gaffes, but I have always placed the blame for that loss mostly on Rodgers (even though he would tell you it was any number of other things).
Rodgers was 19-of-34 for 179 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. That gave him a 55.8 rating.
You can blame the Brandon Bosticks of the world for that loss, but the simple fact is, in the NFL you need your best players to show up for the biggest games. Rodgers didn’t really bother to do that.
We know what happened in 2015. It was hard to watch and Jordy Nelson’s absence was a convenient excuse.
Now Jordy Nelson is back, so there is no excuse. Rodgers is just doing his job poorly.
I’m sure there plenty of you out there who are ready to type a diatribe about my intelligence because HOW DARE I!?!
Just look at these statistics.
- Yards per game: 219 (26)
- Yards per attempt: 6.3 (28)
- Completion percentage: 56.1 (31)
- Rating: 87.7 (19)
The number in parenthesis is Rodgers’ ranking among quarterbacks with enough attempts. Clearly, all of those numbers put Rodgers in the bottom half of the league. In fact, he’s dead last in completion percentage.
Those numbers represent something else as well. If they hold for the entire season, they would also be career lows for Rodgers.
Unless something suddenly changes, the days of the Packers relying on Aaron Rodgers and their high-powered offense to win games are over. Someone should get Mike McCarthy that memo.