I feel like this is one of those areas where we are so spoiled for good quarterbacking we can't really put ourselves in a position to judge this fairly.
Winner winner chicken dinner.
We can only stand obnoxiously on the sidelines laughing at teams with this kind of problem. Right now we're in the heavenest football heaven ever gone to. That "super bowl drought" is, in reality, notable because after a 3/4 dynasty run,
nobody stays "potentially" viable another decade, and
whatever comes after nobody comes back and wins 3/5 after a decade. This isn't just "oh a different kind of dynasty from the 70s steelers or the 80s 9ers or the 90s Cowboys..." This is quantitatively mo better.
Every story during that period, other than the Brady 2008 injury, pretty much turned out to be overrated. Just damn. But that said, we've been able to straight-up laugh at would-be rivals most years with no fear, and the Rodgers drama is no exception.
My opinion? We got a right guy, right team, right coach, right moment quadfecta in the Brady-Belichick era,
combined with 2 guys that somehow got winning like nobody else who gets there gets it... keeping the hunger alive, keeping never too high and never too low... and on BB's side, keeping ruthlessly focused, even if that means a revolving ensemble cast. Sure I'd love to see Philippa Soo play Eliza, but that's 5 casts ago. Move on.
So here we are in this cosmically unlikely position to laugh at what happens in the real world... and what is happening to/because of Rodgers is a sad example.
1) Folks looking for things to hate about Rodgers (I think I saw missing the open guy then trying to make up for it with a SC highlight throw, whatever...) Come on. Let's stipulate that as a pure QB, he's ****ing great. He really is. Take away intangibles, he's woulda-coulda-shoulda great, a lot like Peyton was. Come to think of it, they both make their real money on commercials. Guess they pad their stats with insurance touchdowns. Thank you very much I'll be here all week.
But seriously, he is good at throwing foobaw. He can even run foobaw a little bit. Yay.
2) Turning on the team, as he's been known to do, really is something we can't judge accurately, but we can really sneer at derisively.
We don't know what happened to spoil us like this. A lot of guys here like to act like they know... We don't know the secret sauce that laughs off every soap opera being imposed from outside (e.g., "this team hates its coach/BB tried to drive out TFB to keep JG in the building"), that says "shrug, it is what it is" with backbreaking losses, even when the Hoodie himself seems "disappointed." I think a lot of it is, winning breeds winning. Everybody concerned has been rewarded many times for rolling with the punches, and we have seen the cautionary tales of those who crumble despite themselves under the pressure, with no institutional guardrails against navel-gazing.
That's what we've seen in Rodgers.
There have been enough stories already that he's looking for more/less subtle ways to make the narrative, "Rodgers is great but the talent/coaching around him, not so much."
Better yet, "Rodgers is the real GOAT, just look at those numbers."
Okay man, end of the season, you just throw some stat sheets into the shredder and get your wife/girlfriend to throw it in the air while you drive in the driveway real slow in your 10-year-old MVP car. That's what you're signing up for.
Don't get me wrong, I am not sure but I think that he plays through pain... anyway, cant remember him being a baby about it. He makes great throws. Legendary low interception numbers (the anti-Favre.) But let something go wrong and he isn't problem-solving, he's building the next narrative. As a writer, I appreciate the instinct, but as a football fan, I'd say it's a good thing that our QB is not Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Not only would he have that narrative thing going on, he also engages in magical thinking.
