The narrative just never seems to change. Aaron Rodgers, when he is playing well, which is far more often than not, means the Packers have a great chance at winning.
When Rodgers doesn’t play at his normal high level, the rest of the team just isn’t good enough to pick him up.
The sports sections all over the country will say “Brady beats Rodgers”, but in reality, Brady has very little to do with the win. Their defense won this game. Our line couldn’t protect Rodgers, and when he gets rattled, his level of play isn’t what it normally is. This is when we would normally see a lot more fast developing plays. Yet Rodgers was consistently taking four step drops, and getting smeared-and that was before Bakhtiati got hurt.
We were 13-3 last year, and the places that we needed to improve to have a real strong shot at getting back to the Super Bowl were evident to everybody. We did virtually nothing to shore up our deficiencies. We didn’t add a single impact wide receiver in the draft or FA. The one guy we did sign, Funchess, opted out of the season because of the pandemic. We replaced a decent but not impactful inside linebacker with an athletic, yet incredibly injury prone one, and /shock face, he’s hurt again.
Instead of addressing our porous run defense, our below average wide receiver group, or weak inside linebacker group, we drafted a quarterback that won’t see the field for three years and a running back. At least Dillon is starting to see some play time.
I don’t honestly know how we could have had a worse off season. We did nothing to close the gap between us and the Niners. And now, Rodgers has to win games for us.
I want to be positive about this team. After all, 13-3 and now 4-1 with MLF should be plenty reason for optimism. But we don’t want to win the regular season. We want to bring the Lombardi home.