Packers' Aaron Rodgers takes big risk with his accountability gambit this week | Opinion
Rodgers' critical comments could cost him the locker room by suggesting to teammates he’s blaming them for the struggles rather than himself.
GREEN BAY − Aaron Rodgers took a big risk with the Green Bay Packers’ season this week.
He almost always has a reason for what he says publicly about the team, and that most certainly applies to his comments this week about accountability. His call for “cutting reps” of guys making too many mistakes was planned.
It’s also a much different leadership approach than he used in 2016, when his attempt to turn around a 4-6 season after a four-game losing streak was to predict the Packers would “run the table.”
That was a unifying message. Calling out the receiving corps of his 3-4 team publicly this week, even if not players by name, is different.
Maybe it will shake up the locker room and light a fire under some guys. Maybe we’ll look back on this in January and see it as a turning point.
But it just as easily could make things worse. It could cost him the locker room by suggesting to some teammates he’s blaming them for the struggles rather than himself. It also could dampen the confidence of young guys he’s trying to get to play better.
“If there are guys who are just intent on winning, (his comments) could help,” an offensive assistant coach in the NFL said. “But a lot of times guys, their egos are involved and now you’re saying, ‘I’d fire these guys or sit them or bench them.’”
Rodgers’ criticism is a clear sign of the Packers’ current state. They’re on a three-game losing streak heading into Sunday’s game at Buffalo as a double-digit underdog. Their season is on the line over the next couple of weeks.
His teammates might interpret his comments a couple of different ways, as was illustrated by the reactions of four NFL coaching and scouting sources I contacted this week. The aforementioned assistant coach saw it as bad leadership.
“Here’s what he should have said: ‘The first guy that has to play better is me,’” the coach said. “That’s what a good leadership guy does. ‘I have to play better, because if I pick up my play, they’ll pick up their play.’ That’s the No. 1 rule from the beginning of time, if the leader takes it on his shoulders, the others will try to do the same.
“But when the leader goes, ‘They’re at fault,’ there are guys in the locker room going, ‘You won’t admit your mistakes, but you point out ours.’ Then he’s all of a sudden losing the respect of the locker room.”
Two others saw it as a sign that Rodgers is trying to hold teammates accountable because he isn’t seeing enough of it from the Packers’ coaching staff.
“I don’t love the leadership style,” a former GM in the league said, “but maybe he thinks they are not being held accountable internally.”
Said another assistant coach: “As I heard them and then read them, I immediately thought he was saying players weren’t being held accountable by young, inexperienced assistant coaches. Matt (LaFleur) lost a number of assistant coaches and replaced them with guys who don’t have a lot of time on task. When Matt agreed (with Rodgers), it tells me Matt must be seeing the same thing.”
Still, Rodgers could have done this all internally – he said he has – and spoken about it publicly in only the most general sense.
So why say it publicly? Maybe because other methods haven’t worked. Or maybe he’s deflecting blame from himself.
“I don’t understand why people have a problem with things that are truthful,” he said Wednesday. “I’m calling things the way I see it. People who don’t think I need to air that stuff out, that’s their opinion. But I’m doing what I think is in the best interest of our guys.”
With 18 years in the league, Rodgers knows the profound effect a quarterback’s words and actions can have on his team’s culture. The risks he’s taking this week are borne out by the recent experience of Russell Wilson.
In the 2021 offseason, Wilson called out the Seattle Seahawks offensive line and demanded the team run a scheme that relied more on him and less on the run. It cost him the locker room, or enough of it to make a difference. After going 12-4 in 2020, the Seahawks went 7-9 in ’21 and shipped him to Denver last March.
“They got rid of Russell for a reason,” one of the assistants said. “It wasn’t because he wasn’t a good player. He was (messing) up the culture. Here’s the quarterback saying, ‘We need to get better offensive linemen, I need to get in a bigger venue.’ Why are you saying this stuff? And he doesn’t admit he holds the ball longer than anybody in the NFL.”
In the past few years, Rodgers has expressed a commitment to speaking honestly publicly, and it’s made him more interesting to talk to than most quarterbacks in this game. He said Wednesday he’s not going to be a robot in news conferences, and he most assuredly is not.
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He has his reasons for calling for the benching of unnamed teammates for too many mental mistakes and thinks it will help in the long run if they hear it from him, even if it upsets some.
“If one of those guys has a problem with it, I’m right here and I’d love to have a conversation,” he said. “I enjoy those conversations. I enjoy any type of conflict like that because I know the resolution on the other side is going to make us a better unit, a better friendship, a better cohesion on the field.”
It's certainly different for players to hear those things coming from the quarterback rather than a coach. We’ll see in the next few weeks whether that’s good or bad.