Where to begin?
Aaron Rodgers, by his own admission, had his worst day as a pro yesterday. And yes, a good part of it was due to the offensive line and McCarthy’s complete lack of attention to pass protection. But Aaron Rodgers did himself no favors in his reads and in his fundamentals. He continues to stare down his first read, and it is killing him and the offense. Asked about possibly missing open receivers in the progression, Rodgers bristled a bit yesterday, giving all the credit to the Vikings coverage as to why he was holding the ball too long on so many occasions.
The fact is this - he’s a first year starter in one of the NFL’s most complicated passing offenses. He’s going through the growing pains we all knew were coming. He’s having problems not only locking on to his first read, but in setting his protection as well. It just killed the offense yesterday. I counted three occasions where Lee or Humphrey motioned into the backfield. It needed to be happening with much more frequency in the face of that Viking pass rush and that is on Rodgers.
The fact that Rodgers has been sacked 21 times through nine games after Favre was sacked only 19 times all year in 2007 is not a coincidence. As many people had observed through the years - Favre’s ability to get rid of the ball quickly made the offensive line look better than it was. And now that a young, inexperienced quarterback is the one pulling the trigger, we’re seeing much more of this line’s deficiencies. Some commenters yesterday took issue with my bringing up Favre, saying that I had supported the move to Rodgers and that I was somehow in violation of that support by noting how the game yesterday would have been different if Favre was still taking the snaps for the Green and Gold.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Aaron Rodgers is a good quarterback with a chance to be great. But he has some serious growing to do, and as McCarthy said this summer, the only way for him to grow now is to play in real games. He’ll have great moments and he’ll have games like he did yesterday. But he is going to be fine. The frustrating part is watching rookie first year starters like Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan have such success. But of course, what do they both have? A running game. And the Packers had the start of one yesterday until McCarthy inexplicably went away from it.
Rodgers is a work in progress. Yesterday was a tough learning experience. We can only hope he and McCarthy both learned a few lessons…
dd said in November 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
