NFL: The Packers and Rodgers: When the Sandglass Leaves

The season of the Green Bay Packers has come to an end – at least in view of the play-off race. With the Atlanta Falcons’ win over Tampa on Monday evening, the packers have no chance of winning the game. The long awaited comeback of Aaron Rodgers ends after a game and with the bankruptcy in Carolina already again. This leads a franchise accustomed to success into an unfamiliar situation – and should finally let several alarm bells ring out at the same time.

In retrospect, Aaron Rodgers’ testimony four days before the Panthers defeat was unbelievably accurate – once again,”I’m not coming back to save this team. I’m coming back to play quarterback the way I can. Hopefully we can all increase collectively and find ways to win the three games that are still to come.”

In fact, Rodgers couldn’t save the team. In addition to three touchdowns, he also threw three interceptions, all three of which came about because he subjected his receivers – quite unusual for Rodgers. It was a clear indication that Rodgers was far from 100 percent after the medically aggressive procedure due to his clavicle fracture. Throwing, which he inimitably puts on, now several yards came down too early.

In other words, he should be right about his forecast. Just like a few years ago, when his famous R-E-L-A-X quote was printed to a winged expression and on T-shirts. Or last season, when Rodgers announced in mid-November, following a start with four wins and six defeats, including four consecutive bankruptcies, that the Packers could win all of the games they had to play. Green Bay did not lose any game until the Conference Championship Game.

The common denominator, however, was not only the fact that Rodgers, full of self-confidence, ultimately made correct forecasts. Rather, it stands out for the incredible performances that Green Bays Quarterback put the whole team on their shoulders and pulled a mediocre squad up to one notch ahead of the Super Bowl in many areas, especially last year.

It would have taken them this year to beat the Panthers and the Vikings one after the other. Without Rodgers in his spectacular gala form, the dream of a late playoff run was over after only one game. In Wisconsin, this is a harsh reality.

For eight years in a row, the Packers were now in the playoffs, most recently Green Bay missed the postseason in Rodgers’ first season as a starter,”It is very disappointing. You never want to be in this situation, but that’s where we are now,”admitted Receiver Randall Cobb with a view to the two outstanding, suddenly comparatively meaningless games and emphasized:”It’s not acceptable. We’ve got too good a team with too many good players to watch the playoffs as spectators.”

According to Cobb, this has to be done “straight up in the off-season and then be ready next year”. Linebacker Nick Perry hit a similar score:”We had our highs and lows and didn’t play as well as we would have had to – and how we could. We haven’t done our job this season. Now we can only look ahead and just move in the right direction.”

The first steps on the way there will take place without Rodgers: Green Bay put the quarterback on the Injured Reserve list for the second time, after missing the playoffs was also fixed mathematically, so the season is over for him “We had the impression that this is definitely in his best interest. He’s not happy about it, it’s a difficult day for him,”said Head Coach Mike McCarthy.

It’s the right decision to end Rodgers’ season. With a visibly unfit Rodgers to play more or less meaningless victories, Green Bay does not help in any way. The question now must be: What are the next steps in the “right direction” demanded by Perry?

If you want to break it down, you could say: The New Orleans Saints would not be the worst example for Green Bay. The Saints managed to turn Drew Brees from the centre of the offense into a part of the offense this year, while the defense improved significantly. Rodgers doesn’t need the former, Rodgers is five years younger than Brees and can still play at his high level when he’s fit.

Nevertheless, Green Bay would do well to make life a little easier for A-Rod. For Hundley, McCarthy made noticeably more route combinations instead of isolation routes, the play calling was better, the screen game worked more efficiently, and Green Bay improved noticeably in the run game.

Rodgers is a player who needs the freedom within a court – it’s not for nothing that the packers train, presumably more than any other team (many of them hardly practice these situations), the scramble passes, which often seem so wild and improvised in the game. So putting him into tight structures at one fell swoop wouldn’t be the wisdom of the end, but Rodgers would also be helpful if he could find a better rhythm through the routes and the play-calling out of his pocket.

In addition, the fact that a good run game always helps a quarterback is universal wisdom. The packers are one of the best run-blocking teams in the league this year, and you can see that on the pitch. Green Bay was only in the position to beat Carolina for the playoff chance because the run and screen game had saved the team several times in the weeks before.

It is important not to forget that Brett Hundley could not really use his audition despite the support of McCarthy – rather the opposite was mostly the case. Therefore, the quarterback question is also a shadow on the horizon: In order to prevent that after Rodgers also the Packers sometimes fall into the no-man’s-land of quarterback, Green Bay has to look for Rodgers’ successor aggressively and early in the draft of 2019 at the latest.

And the Defense? It’s the annual theme in Green Bay, which makes it even harder to understand exits such as those of Micah Hyde and especially Casey Hayward. Especially because the Secondary is again a problem this year: The Packers are well staffed in the pass rush with Mike Daniels, Kenny Clark and Nick Perry, the statistics and the tape confirm this.

Whether adjusted bag rate (7.3 percent eleventh best value) or pure bags (32. rank 16): Green Bay’s problem is not the pass rush, even the linebackers are not the problem. Nevertheless, the Packers still allow 7.8 yards per pass and are particularly vulnerable at critical moments.

Whether it’s third-down conversions (44.8 percent, third weakest value), opponent’s touchdown efficiency (23.5 percent, last place) or opponent’s red zone scoring efficiency (100 percent, last place) – if that’s what counts, the Packers Defense was far too often neglected. And the fact that Dom Capers’ Defense has been having trouble defending the Zone Read for ages was once again visible against Carolina on Sunday.

Over the past few years, Green Bay has repeatedly invested in defense, whether in the Free Agency or in the Draft. The fact that Capers has not been able to make significant progress for years, that schematic mistakes continue to be made, and that the defense is repeatedly beaten in the most important moments of a game, must have consequences at some point.

The Packers bosses should listen to Rodgers’ quotations from the week before. A-Rod can save the team on good days, but this should not be the plan from the beginning. This impression was last seen too often with packers.

In Green Bay they have been spoiled over the past few years, the transition from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers is the dream of every franchise and has been giving the Packers Hall-of-Fame-Quarterback-Play for about 25 years now. Many fans know no Packers team without a top 5 quarterback in their own ranks.

And yet they didn’t manage to constantly surround Rodgers with a good squad in Green Bay, and instead relied on his quality to cover cadre problem zones. So exactly the other way around. If Green Bay wants to turn the fact that they have the best quarterback of the league in their ranks into countable again, the team has to act now. Rodgers will be 35 next year, the grains of sand in the title clock will be dangerously scarce.

It can take years or even decades to find a real Elite quarterback. Nobody knows what the future in Green Bay looks like in this respect. The team can only control one thing, namely by giving Rodgers the best possible chance to win more titles. That’s what they owe themselves in Green Bay with the quarterback luxury situation.