The 12-3 Green Bay Packers are division champions, now vying for a first-round bye as the NFC’s No. 2 seed heading into their matchup with the Detroit Lions on Sunday. What’s more, they’re still in contention for the top seed and home-field advantage, which they can earn with a win over the Lions and a San Francisco 49ers loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
That’s right; under a first-year head coach in Matt LaFleur, the Packers, as a potential No. 1 seed, could storm their way into the Super Bowl and claim their fifth Lombardi Trophy in franchise history. It doesn’t get much more dominant than that.
And yet, the Packers find themselves on this track in a season that has not seen and likely will not see any of their players or coaches earn any of the major individual awards. Think LaFleur deserves to win Coach of the Year for becoming the first head coach in franchise history to guide his team to the playoffs? He’ll have to contend with his peer, the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, the odds-on favorite. As for NFL MVP, an award Aaron Rodgers has won twice? Just ship the trophy to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson already.
In fact, not only is Rodgers – a quarterback, we’ll stress again for emphasis, who may very well lead his team to the Super Bowl in his first season under a new head coach after missing the playoffs the previous two years – out of this year’s MVP conversation, but he’s on pace for statistically his worst season in a year he’s played all 16 games.
Through Week 16, Rodgers has amassed 3,679 yards on 514 attempts, with a 63.4 completion percentage, 24 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a 97.9 passer rating.
As a reminder, in his first MVP season, 2011, in which he played 15 games, Rodgers amassed an eye-popping 4,643 yards for 45 touchdowns, six interceptions, a 68.3 percent completion percentage, and an NFL-record 122.5 passer rating. All but the interceptions remain his career-best.
In his second MVP season, 2014, Rodgers threw for 4,381 yards, 38 touchdowns, five interceptions, with a 65.6 completion rating in 16 games.
Now, for a reminder you don’t need: the Packers did not make it past the championship game in either of those seasons.
There’s something else that stands out about Rodgers’ 2014 season, a stat not included in the list above. It’s the year in which Rodgers’ logged the fewest passing attempts of his career, just 520. Rodgers did, however, own a hefty percentage of the Packers’ total points: 47 percent.
Now, in 2019, Rodgers has made even fewer attempts through 15 games: 514. It will either be the fewest or the second-fewest of his career when he’s played a full season. Correspondingly, his touchdowns are way down, at 24. If he does not throw a touchdown on Sunday, it will be his fewest in any complete season. Now, rather than being responsible for nearly half of the Packers’ points, Rodgers’ share is just 41 percent.
With such insanely different outputs for Rodgers – with one season, statistically the best of his career, the other, statistically the worst through 16 games – why compare the Packers’ 2014 and 2019 iterations?
Well, to start, there’s this: 2014 was also the year in which Eddie Lacy became the first Packers running back to post consecutive 1,000-plus-yard seasons since Ryan Grant in 2008-09. In 2014, Lacy also had nine rushing touchdowns and another four receiving, contributing 16 percent of the Packers’ total points that year.
In 2019, running back Aaron Jones is on pace for 1,049 rushing yards and 17 rushing touchdowns, a bit better than Lacy’s 2014 campaign. As long as he gets 16 ground yards on Sunday, Jones will become the first Packers running back since Lacy in 2014 to hit the 1,000-yard mark. He’s also responsible for 27 percent of the Packers’ points in 2019.
In his first year in Green Bay, LaFleur has figured something out: Aaron Rodgers does not need to be responsible for the lion’s share of the Packers offense for the team to be successful.
By all accounts, the 2019 team boasts the most balance the Packers have seen on offense in years. Mike McCarthy’s play-calling was once balanced, but in his last seasons, he leaned on Rodgers game in and game out. (Let’s not forget this is also true: Rodgers took over the offense to play hero ball, not always to great success.)
In 2019, rushing attempts count for 42 percent of the team’s offense, compared with 58 percent passing. Contrast that to the last two full seasons Rodgers played under McCarthy, in which rushing attempts accounted for 34 percent of the offensive play-calling in 2018 and 37 percent in 2016.
Now, it’s true the 2014 Packers didn’t miss the Super Bowl because they leaned too heavily on Rodgers. They missed the Super Bowl because of one of the biggest collapses in NFL playoff history, one we do not need to relive or re-litigate here! The 2014 Packers were dominant, the NFL’s No. 1 offense in points. The 2019 Packers rank 13th in points. Not bad at all, but not dominant.
But here’s the thing. Aaron Rodgers just turned 36 years old. If he plays four more years, he’ll become only the 16th quarterback to start in the NFL after the age of 40. Only one, Tom Brady, has won a Super Bowl after the age of 40.
The simple fact is that Rodgers can no longer shoulder the weight of the Packers offense. Does the LaFleur offense, in its first year, look, at times, streaky, inconsistent, sputtery? Sure. Has it also significantly unburdened Rodgers, who, as a reminder, is under contract for five more seasons? Absolutely.
Rodgers’ 514 attempts this season, his lowest-ever heading into Week 17—that’s the key stat.
Quite frankly, it’s hard to imagine a McCarthy-led Packers team vying for the No. 1 seed in Week 17 with Rodgers having one of the lowest-output seasons of his career.
“I think the level of success and the way that I feel I’m playing is different in this offense this year,” Rodgers said, per ESPN’s Rob Demovsky. “I don’t need to throw 40 touchdowns for us to win. I need to be great on my checks, be as efficient as possible. I need to take care of the football.
“There were years when I was throwing it 600 times damn near every year, and that’s what we needed to do to win,” Rodgers added. “This year, we’ve done it a different way.”
The beauty of the LaFleur offense – when he’s able to run it – is that illusion of complexity. It’s that the majority of the plays start out looking the same, only to morph into a pass or a run depending on what the defense gives them. It’s running the same plays out of 11, 12, 13 personnel, confusing the defense, creating open throws for Rodgers and simplifying his reads and progressions.
Now, there have been times this season where LaFleur’s offense has looked pretty darn similar to the offense McCarthy was running. While LaFleur’s offense would have Rodgers under center the majority of the time, in the hopes of improving the play-action game, we’ve certainly seen him operating in a fair share of shotgun. Rodgers is still holding the ball too long (2.73 average time to attempt, per Pro Football Focus, the fourth-longest among quarterbacks who have taken at least 20 percent of snaps) despite LaFleur’s focus on the quick-strike passing game.
But with the team running very little of its new playbook in the preseason, these Packers, on the whole, have had few reps with the full LaFleur offense unleashed. Given what we’ve seen so far, we have no reason to assume that it will only continue to mesh as these concepts are run more and more.
The 2011 and 2014 seasons were great for Aaron Rodgers. They were not great for the Packers.
But if you asked Rodgers which he’d rather have in 2019, a new career touchdown record or a Lombardi Trophy, you already know what the answer would be.