It’s difficult to fully grasp the stunning fall of Aaron Rodgers without comparing the numbers from his prolonged struggles with the height of his statistical powers.
Over his last 15 regular season games, including Sunday night’s disaster in Minnesota, Rodgers has completed just 58.1 percent of his passes, with 24 touchdowns, nine interceptions and a passer rating of 84.4. He’s averaged 6.3 yards per attempt, with two games over 300 yards passing and just one with a passer rating over 100.0. The Packers are 8-7 in those 15 games.
Now compare those numbers to what he produced over the 16 regular season games prior to his slide.
From Week 4 in 2014 to Week 3 in 2016, Rodgers tossed 43 touchdowns and just four interceptions, while completing 67.6 percent of his passes, averaging 8.75 yards per attempt and producing a passer rating of 119.8. He had eight 300-yard games and 13 games with a passer rating over 100.0, and the Packers won 14 of the 16 games.
Once a football immortal, with two NFL MVPs and a hoard of supporters confident in calling him the greatest and most efficient quarterback of all-time, Rodgers has sunk to the realm of merely average over a significant sample size of 15 games.
His struggles were on full display on Sunday night, as Rodgers took five sacks and had three fumbles (including one lost) before throwing a game-deciding interception on Green Bay’s final possession. He was unnerved inside the pocket and wildly inaccurate, two vastly importantly areas where he used to claim statistical and observable dominance over the majority of his quarterbacking brethren.
“Well, we’re not going to overreact,” Rodgers said, via ESPN. “It’s been two weeks. We’ve been not quite finding our rhythm yet, but we’ve got some guys working in that haven’t worked together a whole lot. So we’re going to trust the process and believe we can get this thing turned around.”
But it hasn’t just been two weeks. The issues that plagued the Packers against Minnesota on Sunday night are the exact same problems that bogged down Green Bay’s consistently great passing offense for long stretches in 2015. And there’s no major injury to blame this time around. Jordy Nelson is back. The team even added an athletic tight end in Jared Cook. At some point, the finger has to be pointed at the quarterback position, no matter how uncomfortable criticizing one of the game’s most talented and respected players is.
The 2015 season doesn’t appear to be an aberration. There are serious issues facing an all-time great quarterback, and the contrasting numbers from his peak and his current state of prolonged stumble prove it.
