The buzz word around the Green Bay Packers this week is “simplify” after Aaron Rodgers specifically requested a simpler offense coming out of Sunday’s loss to the New York Jets.
What does it mean? Asked on Monday, coach Matt LaFleur jokingly said he didn’t know.
The four-time MVP provided more explanation of what “simplify” means on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesday.
“At the heart of it is execution,” Rodgers said. “The most important thing is executing the plan and scoring points. What I mentioned in that…how hard the coaches do work, and how the plan comes together each week, with a lot of study and film review and self scout as they put in together their 20 runs and more than that passes they install from week to week. The point was, that if we’re not executing those plans, which, to be honest, are not the most complex things the majority of the time, then the only slight reaction would be to simplify things even further. That doesn’t mean less motions or less checks at the line of scrimmage. It just means, let’s make sure that these guys can handle what we’re doing. It was really an alert for our players. We need to lock in a little bit more, and simplify things in our own mind. Even the most complex plays can be simplified in our my mind…we just have to be better at the details. That’s the real thing I was trying to stress. The details haven’t been good enough. We’ve had multiple plays with 10 guys doing something right and one guy isn’t. Or nine guys are doing it right and two guys aren’t on the same page with communication. That stuff can’t happen.”
Rodgers, who said he was expecting “growing pains,” clarified he wasn’t challenging the coaching staff and was instead pointing the finger at the players in the locker room. It’s time for everyone to start executing at a high level.
“We need to simplify our own game. Both fundamentally and execution-wise,” Rodgers said. “It’s not anything against the staff, because those guys put a lot of work into it and care about it a lot and try to detail the plan to us as much as possible. At some point, the accountability has to be on the players to go out and execute.”
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