I mean, I guess this is a stones and glass houses thing given all the Brady cliff posts on this forum, but it's nice to know that our fanbase isn't alone in being terminally unable to appreciate having a great QB.
Personally, as much as I think people overrate Rodgers a bit when times are good, I think piling on now is ill-advised in a similar way. And maybe it's a product of the same thing: people spent years believing that Mike McCarthy was stupid and Rodgers' weapons didn't matter because the offense was all him, which leads to the belief that as long as Rodgers is there they'll be fine because he's the only one doing anything anyway. But that was never true, there were always a bunch of other people making major contributions, and a lot of those people are either gone and unreplaced or aren't good anymore so
of course the offense isn't performing as well.
Just look at who Rodgers is throwing to. Davante Adams is good, but I wouldn't rank him as a top 15 NFL WR. And Jordy Nelson was clearly never the same after his ACL injury, so I don't fault the Packers for letting him go, but I do fault them for replacing him with Jimmy Graham who simply isn't very good anymore and got paid purely on the basis of a touchdown total that was inflated by the fact that the Seahawks couldn't run the ball at the goal line. Randall Cobb hasn't been good for 3 years, and even Geronimo Allison is on IR. So now Rodgers is left with an okay line that's played poorly lately, a pretty good albeit one-dimensional RB in Aaron Jones, an overrated TE who can't get any kind of reliably separation, a WR1 who's
maybe the 20th best WR in the NFL, and his WRs 2 and 3 are rookies picked in the 5th and 6th round (Equanimeous St. Brown and Marquez Valdes-Scantling).
Also, we don't know how much his knee injury is still affecting him, so it's hard to gauge how much his play has really dropped off vs just fighting through an injury. Granted, there's a separate conversation to be had about the fact that he's 35 and appears increasingly injury prone, and that his style of play probably won't age especially
badly, but will not age as well as a pure pocket passer like Brady, Brees or even Rivers.
I think Rodgers could transition into becoming a pure pocket passer and do fine, and it would serve his longevity and ability to stay healthy well if he did, but it would be at the cost of taking away one of the most deadly elements of his game, and the one thing he does that Brady never really had to begin with: the ability to scramble out of the pocket, create time and space, wait for coverage to break down, and then throw a rocket of a ball at any moment, regardless of whether his feet were set. It's maybe the single most unique part of his game, so I get why he's reluctant to give it up, but he may have to if he wants to play anything approaching full seasons at anything close to 100% health. We may already be at the point where the cost of continuing in this style outweighs the benefit, and we may soon be approaching the point where he can't physically do it anymore anyway.
But all in all, I guess I just don't see why anyone would expect Rodgers to be better than he's been in this environment. Would Brady do a better job of winning games with a bunch of skill position JAGs like that? Yeah, almost definitely, but Brady's the GOAT at making due with JAGs, and even despite being the best at it his stats did take major hits when his skill position weapons got especially thin (2006, 2013, earlier this season when everyone was injured). In a weird way I think it's kind of a testament to how good Rodgers is that people are shocked and scandalized that he's basically human and can't elevate a bunch of late-round rookies into a high-octane offense. The only real fault I'd place on Rodgers' shoulders here is that he continues taking market-rate contracts rather than leaving money on the table to build a better team around him, but a) I don't really fault him for that because I never fault players for taking what they can get, and b) the Packers' FO is so **** that I'm not sure them having another $5-7M to light on fire would move the needle anyway. But sure, maybe they could have signed Donte Moncrief with that money instead of the Jaguars and maybe their WR depth chart would look less ****ty now, who knows.
I have a higher opinion of McCarthy than most, it seems, so I wouldn't even blame him first, but I would probably blame him over Rodgers. First and foremost, though, I would blame the FO for putting together a genuinely ****ty team that happens to be carried by a great QB.
