Name: The truth about Aaron Rodgers’ stats
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The truth about Aaron Rodgers’ stats

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Sep 11, 2020Tumultuous is a good word to describe recent seasons for quarterback . On the field, Rodgers lost his favorite receiving targets, Jordy Nelson and , as the talent around him eroded. On the sideline, longtime coach Mike McCarthy lost his job, with some questioning whether Rodgers was as supportive of the coach as he should have been. In the front office, the Packers made a change at general manager that Rodgers embraced, only to have the team’s new leaders draft his successor in the first round of the 2020 draft, again neglecting the receiving corps. Throw in the broken collarbone Rodgers suffered in 2017 and these have not been the quarterback’s glory days, despite a run to the NFC Championship Game under new coach Matt LaFleur last season.Rodgers’ stats are also out of balance. The two-time MVP finished 2019 ranked 20th in Total QBR, 17th in yards per attempt, 14th in expected points added per attempt, 12th in passer rating, etc. Name the stat, and Rodgers probably has not been setting the pace as he once did routinely. It’s not just last season, either. The past three years in particular have seen Rodgers fall from the statistical mountaintop. Yet, even as Rodgers’ numbers have eroded, prompting charges that Rodgers is , coaches and evaluators voting in my annual Quarterback Tiers project have placed the future Hall of Famer in the top tier on 149 of 155 ballots (96 percent) over the past three years. League insiders see a quarterback who still makes the spectacular play, still directs the two-minute offense with panache and still would upgrade almost any team. Yet, there were four Tier 2 votes for Rodgers in 2020, which was up from two in 2019, which was up from zero in 2018. So, there is at least some acknowledgement that something isn’t the same for Rodgers.Has Rodgers declined, or has a diminished supporting cast pulled his statistics down in line with those for mere mortals at the position, misleading the statistically reliant?There was one simple way to find out. With some guidance from coaches, first in meetings at the Senior Bowl and combine, then in Zoom sessions during the pandemic, I systematically compared 2014 MVP Rodgers to the 2019 version by charting every incomplete pass across both seasons. The goal was to see whether the 2019 Packers suffered from an unusually high number of missed opportunities on catchable balls. Turns out, they did — in a big way.Relative to the 2014 season, Rodgers’ supporting cast in 2019 left on the field nearly double the yardage (1,281 to 744), nearly double the explosive gains (34 to 18) and nearly double the touchdowns (15 to eight). The table below lays out these differences in missed opportunities on catchable balls, bridging the gap between Rodgers’ diminished statistics and his continued Tier 1 status within the league. Most knew there was little comparison between the polished pass catchers Rodgers played with into the mid-2010s and the less gifted, increasingly anonymous ones he has targeted more recently. Unknown was what those differences looked like statistically. We now have numbers.Editor’s note: This table has been updated to reflect yardage lost in 2014 from all catches, not just explosive catches.Below we run through the five highest-yardage missed opportunities from the 2019 season to provide a feel for the types of plays involved. I’ve added in comments from coaches with a few screenshots from the NFL’s all-22 video.2019 Play No. 1: Rodgers’ pass travels 51 yards past the line of scrimmage to between the hashes and behind the ’ secondary with 11:25 left in the first quarter of a Week 15 game at Green Bay.The pass travels through the receiver’s grasp as Valdes-Scantling fails to finish the play, which was marked as a missed 69-yard touchdown opportunity.“Perfect ball,” one of the coaches said.2019 Play No. 2: It’s third-and-8 from the Green Bay 25 in the third quarter of a Week 9 game against the . Receiver slows his route about 20 yards downfield, then has to sprint in an effort to make up ground as Rodgers’ arcing pass eludes him.The ball travels 49 yards past the line of scrimmage, dropping between the receiver’s outstretched hands. Kumerow could have gained at least another 10 yards after the catch. This one is scored as 61 missed yards.“What are you doing?” one of the coaches exclaimed as the video rolled. “Why would you slow down near the DB? You are covering yourself!”2019 Play No. 3: Rodgers rolls right for a Hail Mary pass on the final play of the second quarter against Chicago in the opener. It’s a play Rodgers and the Packers have executed better than anyone, with spectacular results in big moments. This time, Rodgers positions himself near the Green Bay 40-yard line and delivers a lob to tight end . There are defenders in the area. It’s not a gimme catch, but the ball appears to hit Graham in the hand inside the 5-yard line. It’s the kind of play you hope a 6-foot-7 former Pro Bowl tight end earning $10 million a year will make.“This is their planned roll like they did in the Dallas game and it’s a Hail Mary,” one of the coaches said as the ball arrived at its destination. “Catch the damn thing! He doesn’t. They continue to be really good on these Hail Mary plays. It’s not perfect. You’d like to get the ball to the end zone. Rodgers mis-throws it to about the 3. But Graham could easily make this.”2019 Play No. 4: This is a play-action deep shot to with 7:10 remaining in the third quarter against the . Adams beats his man and is 46 yards past the line of scrimmage along the left hash when Rodgers’ pass hits him in both hands before the defender arrives.“Rodgers could lead him a little more,” one of the coaches said. “Adams has to wait for it. But it’s still a two-handed drop for a 50-yard gain.”2019 Play No. 5: If any play shows off Rodgers’ raw talent and flair for the spectacular, this might be it. The Packers are facing third-and-17 from midfield with 12 seconds left in the third quarter of the season-opener at Chicago. Rodgers drifts left initially and bounces on his toes like a boxer keeping warm during pre-fight introductions, except Rodgers is directing his receivers with his free hand as he scans the field. Sensing pressure, Rodgers takes off on a sprint toward the right sideline. He keeps his eyes downfield, crosses the yard-line numbers, arcs upfield and slows his pace as he nears the line of scrimmage. Rodgers cocks his arm and unleashes a pass across his body and across the field. The ball finds Graham positioned near the 10-yard line, just inside the yard-line numbers on the other side of the field. It’s an incredible pass that perhaps only Rodgers or Mahomes are supple and athletic enough to make. The ball bounces off Graham’s shoulder pad and falls incomplete. This play is logged as 49 yards missed and a field-goal opportunity, at least.“If he catches this, 20 (safety ) gets him after seven more yards, just short of the goal line,” one of the coaches says.More where those came fromMissed opportunities are part of the equation for every quarterback. Rodgers made inaccurate throws and poor decisions on some of the 2019 plays that were logged, but there were so many more plays where Rodgers delivered the ball accurately without getting the payoff.Five of the 15 potential missed touchdowns involved Graham, who frustrated the coaches consulted here by too frequently raising just one arm when trying to catch the ball. One of these plays featured Graham making a leaping attempt in the end zone with 9:08 left in the fourth quarter against Philadelphia as Rodgers scrambled to his right from the 10-yard line.“See Jimmy come back to the near pylon? Jimmy is right, Jimmy is so smart,” one of the coaches said. “He is not going to have two guys in the same spot, so you go here or there fast. Jimmy does and they always say they trust Jimmy, right? But what are you doing using one hand? Why would you do that?”Another time, late in the second quarter of a Week 5 game at Dallas, Rodgers escaped pressure and threw on the run for Kumerow at the sideline. Kumerow got both feet down as he fell to the sideline. The ball bounced off his hands. A 23-yard gain, squandered.“See how nice that is?” one of the coaches said. “These receivers they have, outside of Adams, they don’t know how to play yet. How much better can you throw it? The answer is, you can’t. Speed rushers are coming, Rodgers is going to have to step up, escapes through the B-gap, now we are on the run, now we flick it perfect, elbow only. That looks pretty easy. Catch the thing for 23 yards. He doesn’t. He is trying, but …”These scramble-drill plays have long been a staple for Rodgers. They are practiced situations where familiarity between quarterback and receiver matter. The rapport Rodgers had with Nelson, Cobb, James Jones, Greg Jennings and Jermichael Finley cannot exist to the same degree with less experienced, less familiar and less talented players filling those spots in so many cases.“He can’t even get them to learn the hand signals now,” one of the coaches said after watching about 60 missed opportunity plays from 2019. “He can’t even get them to do the scramble drill right. He can’t get them to motion on the right time. I see these passes and they look like they have every other year. He misses more overthrows now, but I see 15-yard throws that no one can make.”Another play flashes onto the screen, this one with 8:27 left in the second quarter of a Week 6 game against Detroit. Rodgers rolls left and throws across his body 13 yards downfield for Graham in the end zone.“How is his spiral looking?” the coach intoned. “You can’t even tell the ball is spinning, it’s so fucking straight.”Graham gets both hands on the ball as he goes to the ground. It’s incomplete.“Rodgers has been most successful when he has had really good catchers of the ball, like Jordy Nelson,” the other coach said. “Guys that he really trusted, where he could throw the ball to them in tight places and they would catch them. Davante Adams is the only one now.”10-year supporting cast evaluationThere was a final step to this Rodgers analysis once the obvious differences between the 2014 and 2019 seasons had been logged. We needed an outside evaluation of the talent surrounding Rodgers. Proscout Inc., the scouting service founded by Mike Giddings in 1977 and run today by Giddings’ son, also named Mike, agreed to provide their color-coded grades for the Packers since 2010, to better capture what is happening in Green Bay. Different evaluators might see a player differently, but one evaluator’s grades over a period of time show relative changes.Proscout places players into eight evaluation categories, beginning with “blue” for the elite and bottoming out at “yellow” for the worst. There are others colors in between. To enhance clarity in the table below, I replaced the colors with numbers (one through eight) and shaded those numbers from blue (one) to yellow (eight) so we could see when and where the Packers had been at their best (bluest) and worst (yellowest) over the past decade. If Green Bay really has fallen off around Rodgers, we should see more yellow creeping into various positions. That is what the Proscout evaluations reveal.Proscout has graded the Packers’ quarterback position as “blue” or “blue box” (the second-best designation) every year since 2010 except for the two seasons when Rodgers missed at least seven games to injury. The situation at tight end has gone from middling to below average since Finley last played in 2013.How well a quarterback plays can affect how the players around him are perceived, but most would agree with Proscout’s general contention that Adams has been the only blue-level receiver or tight end for the Packers over the past five seasons. And that makes sense, for the Packers are the only NFL team to draft zero wide receivers in the first three rounds over the past five years. Green Bay had between one and three “blue” or “blue box” receivers/tight ends in each season from 2010-2015. When Rodgers last posted an MVP-caliber QBR in 2016, the Packers had no “blue” players at any other offensive skill positions. However, the grades from Proscout indicate Green Bay was “red” (solid starter, which is the third level after blue and blue box) at each of those spots except tight end. The Packers have graded out much worse in those positions over the past three seasons while also coming under criticism from some for unimaginative scheming. The statistics associated with Rodgers and the pass offense reflect that.The final chart shows Rodgers’ annual QBRs in relation to those for league MVPs. His QBR was 77.8 during his 2014 MVP season, second in the league. But with his supporting cast falling off so markedly, Rodgers’ QBR was only 52.5 last season, one spot below , even as Proscout graded Rodgers as “blue” and 46 of 50 Quarterback Tiers voters placed him in Tier 1. The chart below also shows Rodgers’ leading receivers by yardage in three-year blocks across his 12 seasons as a starter. The top five receiving yardage gainers from 2008-2010 (Jennings, Donald Driver, James Jones, Nelson and Finley) are so much better than the 2017-2019 group (Adams, Graham, Valdes-Scantling, and ) that no discussion is required. It just is what it is.‘He will find something that works’One of the coaches who reviewed Packers game video from 2014 and 2016 marveled at how Rodgers bailed out the offense by scrambling to make plays. This coach counted five successive plays against Atlanta in 2016 when the Packers ran slant-flat pass concepts, had nothing open and Rodgers used his legs to save the offense anyway. The scheme is different now. It’s a play-action offense that ideally makes life easier for quarterbacks, while also minimizing them.“It limits Rodgers to where it is this or throw the check-down,” one of the coaches said. “Knowing Aaron a little, I think he would like four receivers out there, preferably two of them big, athletic tight ends because they can make plays, or a back he can have a mismatch with, and then let ’em run around and he’ll find them and throw it because nobody else can throw it to where he throws it. I don’t think he has had that. What they have had is, they just run plays and if it’s not there, he will find something that works.”While the Packers did almost nothing in the draft or free agency to enhance their weaponry, they are coming off a 13-3 season and could be successful again in 2020, especially if their pass catchers do not leave 1,281 yards and 15 touchdowns on the turf.(Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Sep 11, 2020Tumultuous is a good word to describe recent seasons for quarterback . On the field, Rodgers lost his favorite receiving targets, Jordy Nelson and , as the talent around him eroded. On the sideline, longtime coach Mike McCarthy lost his job, with some questioning whether Rodgers was as supportive of the coach as he should have been. In the front office, the Packers made a change at general manager that Rodgers embraced, only to have the team’s new leaders draft his successor in the first round of the 2020 draft, again neglecting the receiving corps. Throw in the broken...

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Mike Sando

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The truth about Aaron Rodgers’ stats

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