Rodgers Review Part III: Better Openers

I’ve had this post in my draft section for ages (remember, I promised you three parts?) and now Tom Silverstein’s column and, more importantly, the column’s sidebar, have prompted me to get it done.

Much has been made of Rodgers’ struggles in ‘crunch time’ last year. And, as Silverstien lays out, most of that is warranted. But there’s another part of the game where Rodgers was noticeably deficient last season – opening drives.

The Packers’ offense was pretty brutal in it’s 16 opening drives last season. More often than not they started with a 3 and Out, occasionally moving the ball a bit before having to punt. Opening drive scoring for the Packers last year consisted of a field goal against the Jaguars and a touchdown against the Buccaneers. That’s it. Every other game started with an opening drive punt, except for the last game against the Lions…which started with an opening drive that ended with the offense turning the ball over on downs. To the Lions.

As most of you are aware, Mike McCarthy, like Sherman, Lewis and Holmgren before him, has a set of 15 to 20 scripted plays, otherwise known as ‘Openers’, that he uses at the beginning of each game in order to test the defense to see how they will react to various formations, personnel groups, etc.  Both McCarthy and Rodgers’ need to do a better job with the openers, but Rodgers in particular needs to get a handle on whatever it is that puts him out-of-sorts at the beginning of each contest. He constantly sails passes at the beginning of games (gee, where have we seen that before?), he is far too quick to pull the ball down and run and he just plain misses reads far too much during the opening snaps.  On top of it all, he has a maddening habit of pulling out from under center early, but only in the first quarter. (For whatever reason, this happens with far less frequently as the game goes on. Simple nerves? Who knows…) This resulted in several fumbled exchanges with the center and killed more than a few early drives last season.

So yes, Rodgers needs to get better ‘in the clutch’, but he and McCarthy would be wise to dedicate some serious offseason time on their openers for 2009. Getting up quickly on the competition doesn’t equate to an automatic win (See: Tampa Bay game) but it sure helps get the offense in a groove when they can take the field and work towards the opponent’s endzone over the course of nine or ten plays.