Opinion: Super Bowl or bust for Aaron Rodgers, whose postseason play hasn't matched elite standard
GREEN BAY, Wis. — If this is the last dance for Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers – and there are millions of pending salary-cap dollars that say it is – then it’s time for the likely four-time MVP and future Hall of Famer to punctuate his career with a Super Bowl title.
Short of giving him the huge raise he reportedly wanted, the Packers have delivered on every want and desire he needed to commit to another season in green and gold.
General manager Brian Gutekunst and his personnel staff have provided Rodgers with a better team than he had when he entered the postseason each of the last two years under coach Matt LaFleur. They’ve shored up the roster with All-Pro linebacker De’Vondre Campbell, starting cornerbacks Rasul Douglas and Eric Stokes and veteran right tackle Dennis Kelly, as well as followed through on Rodgers’ demand to trade for receiver Randall Cobb.
The Packers even knocked off the final year of Rodgers’ contract when he came back from his offseason boycott so that the Packers would be forced to extend him or risk getting only a compensatory pick for him if he leaves after the ’23 season.
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There has even been an attempt to keep him more in the loop when it comes to personnel decisions, which was a major peeve of his when he was in full boycott mode. This is known because Rodgers has mentioned it several times this season.
They even went along with his deception regarding his vaccine status and let him do news conferences without wearing a mask. Wrong as it might be, they protected him and probably would have continued to if he hadn’t tested positive for COVID-19.
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Essentially, the Packers have set up the pins in perfect order for him.
So has the football world.
He is going to win a fourth MVP despite Tom Brady having an equally good if not better season based on his stats and number of game-winning drives (five). Rodgers has taken a beating in the court of public opinion for his views against vaccination and statements that contradict science, but he gets a weekly pass to say anything on "The Pat McAfee Show" where he is almost never challenged.
Rodgers used every ounce of fame, status and professional leverage he had to fight the Packers during the offseason. And while he has every right to do so and probably accomplished some positive things, doing such a thing requires holding up your end of the bargain.
During the regular season he has done exactly that, once again leading the NFL in passer rating (111.9) and losing only two games in which he started and played to the end. It wasn’t as good as the 2020 season when he posted a 121.5 rating and led the Packers to the highest-scoring offense in the NFL, but it was good in a different way.
But now it’s the postseason and while Rodgers carried the team on its run to Super Bowl XLV, he hasn’t done anything like that since. He has had some terrible defenses and subpar special teams units around him, but the offense has been stacked with talent year after year and the Packers are 0-4 in NFC championship games since 2011.
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His passer rating in NFC title games is 83.7. He has thrown nine touchdown passes and eight interceptions in five chances to get to the Super Bowl.
Brady’s stats aren’t that much better in his 14 championship games (21 touchdowns, 17 interceptions), but in 10 Super Bowls he has thrown 21 touchdown passes and six interceptions (97.7) rating. He is 7-3 in those games.
This is the 11th season since the Packers won a Super Bowl with Rodgers at quarterback and they are 7-8 in playoff games during that span.
Rodgers has terrific postseason stats, but for a three-time MVP and 10-time Pro Bowl selection they are not in elite territory. Not even in the areas that have always been his statistical strong points.
He ranks first all-time in regular-season passer rating (104.5), but sixth in postseason passer rating (150 attempts minimum) with a 100.5 mark, according to Pro Football Reference. Patrick Mahomes (105.1), Bart Starr (104.8), Kurt Warner (102.8), Josh Allen (100.9) and Matt Ryan (100.8) rank ahead of him.
He ranks first all-time in regular-season interception percentage (1.31), but he ranks sixth in postseason annals (1.7) behind Allen (0.60), Alex Smith (0.79), Jared Goff (1.02), Patrick Mahomes (1.3) and Bart Starr (1.4).
He ranks tied for 10th in yards per attempt in the regular season (7.6), but ranks tied for 16th in the postseason, well behind all-time leader Warner (8.6).
Statistics aren’t everything and judging his playoff impact just on those isn’t fair, but it does reflect whether his regular-season statistics are inflated and not as consequential as those against the elite teams in the playoffs.
Missing more than anything from Rodgers’ postseason performances are game-winning drives. In 17 games, he has pulled out just one game – a divisional-round playoff at Dallas five years ago – in the final minutes after trailing, according to Pro Football Reference. He is also credited with a fourth-quarter comeback in the 2015 divisional playoff victory against the Cowboys at Lambeau Field, when the Packers scored late to take the lead and then held on.
By comparison, Brady has 14 postseason game-winning drives in 46 postseason games played. San Francisco’s Jimmy Garoppolo, the Los Angeles Rams’ Matthew Stafford and Arizona’s Kyler Murray don’t have any, but they’ve played a combined seven playoff games, so there isn’t much data to consider.
Rodgers had a pair of game-winning drives this year against San Francisco and Cincinnati, games in which the Packers benefited from the extraordinary connection between him and receiver Davante Adams. But he also failed to put away Arizona, Baltimore and Cleveland when he had a chance and walked away a winner in those games because the defense sealed the victory with two interceptions and a broken-up two-point conversion.
Rodgers has a lot going for him heading into these playoffs. His offensive line is getting healthy, he has the best receiver in the game, a two-headed running attack and a defense better than any he has had in quite a while.
The Packers’ world has rotated around Rodgers for nearly a year and much of it is his doing. When you think of the Packers, you think of their quarterback because he has been at the center of everything.
With that comes the responsibility of being great when the team needs you to be great. If the past year and everything that has gone with it means anything, he must lead this team to a Super Bowl victory.
Otherwise, it will be the worst dance anyone has ever attended