Tag: Aaron Rodgers (Page 14 of 35)

      How did the Packers get here?

      January 19, 2011 /

      With the Green Bay Packers getting ready to face the Bears in the NFC Championship Game this weekend, it’s a good time to stop and reflect on a franchise that was in a serious state of flux as recently as two-and-a-half years ago, when Aaron Rodgers took the reins from Brett Favre.

      Ted Thompson is the man who made that call (and countless others) over the past six years, so he’s ultimately responsible for the Packer roster as it stands. A roster that is playing very good football and has enough depth to withstand 15 players on injured reserve, including starters Jermichael Finley, Nick Barnett, Ryan Grant, Brandon Chillar and Mark Tauscher.

      Let’s go year-by-year and look at each draft, along with any major transaction that Thompson made.

      2005

      Thompson took over in January of 2005, with the Packers coming off a 10-6 season and a first round loss to the Vikings at Lambeau Field. Mike Sherman was stripped of his personnel duties, and Thompson was brought in to call the shots.

      The 2005 season was a rough one. The Packers went 4-12. Favre tossed 29 interceptions and the Packers were 31st in turnover ratio. It was an excruciating season as Green Bay was just 1-5 in games decided by three points or less. Part of the problem was Thompson’s unwillingness to pay free agent (and Pro Bowl) guards Marco Rivera and Mike Wahle. The O-line struggled, and so did the Packers.

      Here’s a look at that Thompson’s ’05 draft: (1) Aaron Rodgers, (2) Nick Collins, (2) Terrence Murphy, (4) Marviel Underwood, (4) Brady Poppinga, (5) Junius Coston, (5) Mike Hawkins, (6) Michael Montgomery, (6) Craig Bragg, (7) Kurt Campbell, (7) Will Whitticker

      Note: Players in bold are starters. Players no longer with the team are in italics.

      Of the 11 players selected in that draft, just three remain. But they’re three good ones. Collins was named to his third consecutive Pro Bowl this season and if Rodgers isn’t a top 5 QB, he will be soon. He also landed a starter-caliber LB (Poppinga) in the fourth. Thompson knew that he had to be patient with Rodgers, especially with Favre still on the roster and capable of MVP-type numbers. He passed on a player that could help immediately in order to draft the QB of the future, and he took some grief for it.

      Obviously it worked out for the best.

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      External Sports, Fantasy Football, NFL

      PFT’s Mike Florio (sort of) apologizes to Aaron Rodgers

      January 19, 2011 /

      It took a few days, but Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has finally apologized to Aaron Rodgers for his knee-jerk reaction to video of Rodgers walking by a cancer patient who was looking to get her hat signed.

      When I saw the video for the first time, I cringed. Many of you did the same. But then I did what we bloggers (or whatever we are) all too often do — I fired off a rebuke of Rodgers without considering anything else about the other things he has done, both publicly and privately, over the years.

      Gregg Doyel of CBS has provided an excellent look at Rodgers’ good deeds, including his work for Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer. You should read Gregg’s article. It’s an eye opener. And I commend Rodgers for his efforts. In many respects, he has shown his appreciation of and concern for the citizens of Green Bay and Wisconsin. If Packers fans hadn’t previously embraced him like they’d embraced Brett Favre, their reaction to the criticism of Rodgers from me and others shows that they now have.

      I apologize to Rodgers for painting him with an unjustifiably broad brush based on a very brief slice of his life. It was wrong to jump to conclusions about whether he treats fans properly, and whether he understands the connection between the fans who support him and the money he makes. Though some have argued that true character is revealed in those fleeting moments, the whole truth about a man falls somewhere between his best days and his worst days. For Rodgers, there’s no reason to believe that the truth isn’t a lot closer to the best than the worst.

      It sounds like Doyel’s article is what turned Florio around, although Rodgers’ charity work was brought to his attention prior to his second scathing post and he dismissed it saying that what people do when the cameras aren’t around is a reflection of their true character.

      Well, there was a camera there and that may have been the reason Rodgers didn’t want to stop, fearing he might get roped into an interview. Or maybe he just zoned out listening to his favorite song while getting ready to fly to Atlanta for the biggest game of his life to that point. Athletes are human and sometimes they just need time to themselves.

      I don’t particularly like the way that Florio begins with “we bloggers,” implying that he’s only guilty of what we’re all guilty of…even though we’re not all guilty of skewering a man’s character over two seconds of video with no knowledge or research into the person’s backstory. He also admits that he’s mainly apologizing to make himself feel better, and later implies in the final paragraph that others are still in the wrong (presumably Rodgers), but hey, at least he apologized. Sort of.

      External Sports, Fantasy Football, NFL, Rumors & Gossip

      Ten QB-needy teams that passed on Aaron Rodgers in the 2005 draft

      January 18, 2011 /
      Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rogers calls out a play against the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland on October 10, 2010. The Redskins went on to defeat the Packers 16-13. UPI/Kevin Dietsch

      The sight of Braylon Edwards doing back flips after the Jets beat the Patriots on Sunday must have made Brown fans want to puke. He didn’t help their team win anything in Cleveland and now the jagoff is knocking on the door of a Super Bowl appearance.

      What makes the situation even tougher for Cleveland fans is that the Browns could have had the quarterback that absolutely shredded the top-seeded Falcons the night before Edwards and the Jets beat the Patriots. Twenty-one slots after the Browns selected Edwards with the third overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft, the Packers nabbed California quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Where would the Browns be today had they taken Rodgers instead?

      Granted, no two situations are ever exactly alike – especially in the NFL. There’s no guarantee that had Cleveland selected Rodgers over Edwards that the Browns would be where the Packers are today. It just doesn’t work that way in sports – or life for that matter. Rodgers could have turned out to be the next Tim Couch for all we know and as I point out below, had the Browns drafted him that year, they may have never acquired feature back Peyton Hillis in 2010.

      But for a moment, let’s play the “What if?” game. Let’s pretend that everything would have worked out for Rodgers in Cleveland, just like it has in Green Bay. Let’s assume that the quarterback-needy Browns would have set themselves up by taking Rodgers at No. 3 and with that in mind, what other teams blew it by not selecting the California gunslinger?

      Come with me on a journey back to Saturday, April 23, 2005. Below is a list of 10 quarterback-needy teams that passed on Rodgers that fateful day and at what pick in the draft. Also listed are the players those teams took ahead of Rodgers, and a brief look at their current situation.

      No. 1 San Francisco 49ers
      Who they took instead of Rodgers: Alex Smith, QB
      This one probably stings the most. Smith and Rodgers were the only quarterbacks that were worthy of taking at No. 1 and the Niners were set on taking a signal caller. They decided on Smith because they fell in love with his athleticism, which was something Rodgers supposedly didn’t have enough of. Thanks to constant coaching turnover and an unstable situation, Smith hasn’t panned out and Rodgers is running around the Georgia Dome carpet making plays with both his arm and legs. So much for not having any athleticism…

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      External Sports, NFL

      Aaron Rodgers walks past a cancer patient; Mike Florio gets on his soapbox

      January 17, 2011 /

      There’s video on YouTube of a WBAY (Green Bay) report that shows Aaron Rodgers walking past a cancer patient at the Green Bay airport as the Packers left for Atlanta. The woman, Jan Cavanaugh, wanted Rodgers to sign her hat. He didn’t, and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio took the opportunity to criticize him for it.

      It doesn’t matter whether it was Rodgers or any other player. Whoever walked by Jan Cavanaugh like she wasn’t even there was going to get reamed on the pages of PFT, because I believe that cancer patients deserve the highest level of respect and deference that can be provided.

      Anyone whose life has been touched by the disease knows what I mean. We all can see in Jan Cavanaugh the mother or sister or aunt or friend or neighbor who has had to confront a silent killer that could kill — and, frankly, eventually will kill — many of the people reading these words. (For those of you who make it to 45 without getting cancer, that’s probably about the time you’ll start worrying from time to time about all the different organs in your body, and your spouse’s body, that eventually could be infested with it.)

      No arguments here. Florio lists a few things that no one will have the gall to disagree with so that he can earn a few supporters.

      So what of the follow-up report from WBAY, which likely has spent much of the past 24 hours apologizing to angry viewers for depicting Rodgers in a negative light and simultaneously applying lips to the buttocks of anyone and everyone in the Packers organization, that Rodgers signed a jersey the week before for Cavanaugh? Apparently, some of you think that makes his decision to walk past her without a nod or a smile or anything else fine and dandy.

      I don’t.

      If anything, this familiarity tends to reinforce the notion that Rodgers knew or should have known that Cavanaugh has cancer, making his failure to offer a friendly nod or a wave or a quick “not today, maybe next time” while she waited for him to sign her hat even more strange.

      I don’t know if Florio has a team of CIA-caliber video technicians over at PFT, but the way the footage was shot it was impossible for me to see if Rodgers nodded or smiled at the woman, so I’m not sure how Florio can definitively say that he didn’t. Rodgers certainly didn’t stop to say anything to her, but he was on his way to Atlanta to play in the biggest game of his life, so it’s safe to say that he had other things on his mind. And there was a television camera there so it’s possible that Rodgers didn’t want to stop and get roped into doing an interview with WBAY when he’s supposed to be getting on the team plane.

      Florio glosses over the fact that the woman has stated that she’s bothered by the criticism that he’s receiving and acknowledged that she and her husband have multiple items signed by the quarterback. In fact, she has an autographed jersey that he signed just a week ago.

      This brings up a good question: Just how much interaction should a professional athlete have with fans — or better yet, the same fan — over a period of time? Whether or not Florio wants to believe it, it is possible that Rodgers met the woman without the topic of cancer coming up. She was wearing pink, but she could simply be a supporter of breast cancer awareness. Does that mean Rodgers has to stop or pause to greet the woman every time he runs into her at the airport? Florio acts as if Rodgers is supposed to remember the personal history of every fan he signs for and at the same time learn the ins and outs of the Atlanta Falcons’ pass defense. That’s a lot to ask of a man, even one as talented as Rodgers.

      Oh, by the way, according to the New York Times, Mike Florio is a longtime Minnesota Vikings fan.

      Just sayin’.

      External Sports, Fantasy Football, NFL

      I’m just saying…the Browns selected Braylon Edwards the same year Aaron Rodgers was drafted.

      January 17, 2011 /
      Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) runs into the end zone past Atlanta Falcons linebacker Curtis Lofton for a touchdown in the 3rd quarter during their NFC Divisional NFL playoff football game in Atlanta January 15, 2011. REUTERS/Rich Addicks (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      I haven’t done this column in a couple of weeks but after this weekend’s games, I thought it was an appropriate time to bring it back.

      So here’s the latest installment of “I’m just saying…,” NFL Divisional Round-style.

      – Colts fans after Nick Folk missed that chip shot field goal in the first quarter of the Jets-Patriots game on Sunday: “Oh come on!”

      – After the Packers-Falcons game, I took a quick look at the stats sheet and saw that Aaron Rodgers was 31-of-36 passing for 366 yards and accounted for four touchdowns. My first reaction was: He had five incompletions?!

      – Hey, when your team is up 25 points late in the third quarter and all you need to do is run some clock, why wouldn’t you call a halfback pass with Matt Forte and risk turning the ball over? You keep doing your thing, Mike Martz.

      – Rex Ryan just beat Peyton Manning and Tom Brady (two of the best quarterbacks in NFL history) in back-to-back weeks using two different game plans. Say what you want about his mouth, but the guy knows defense.

      – If I’m a team that needs a defensive coordinator, I’m on the phone right now with Rob Ryan. I want that gene pool designing my defenses.

      – Most defenders would sacrifice one of their limbs to have a free shot at Jay Cutler when he’s running with the ball towards the end zone. But instead of delivering a punishing blow, Seattle safety Earl Thomas tried to bring the quarterback down by osmosis on Cutler’s touchdown run in the second quarter on Sunday. Somewhere, Ndamukong Suh is weeping.

      – Matt Ryan after the game on why he threw the sideline pass that Tramon Williams intercepted and returned for a touchdown instead of throwing the ball away: “Well, I thought if Williams was anything like our corners, he would be playing 10 yards off the ball and I’d be able to pick up an easy seven yards.”

      – I know where I’ve seen Bears’ O-lineman Frank Omiyale before: he doubles as a turnstile at Halas Hall during the weekdays.

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      External Sports, NFL

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