Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Packer Plus
PETE DOUGHERTY
Aaron Rodgers buying into Matt LaFleur’s system
Green Bay — Five touchdown passes and a max 158.3 rating say plenty about Aaron Rodgers’ play Sunday.
But if Rodgers’ gaudy numbers in a win over Oakland were the latest sign that he and coach Matt LaFleur are meshing, just as telling were two throws that didn’t do much for the stat sheet but nevertheless signaled the Packers quarterback is playing the way his new coach envisioned.
LaFleur calls them “no-flinch throws.”
On both, Rodgers stood in the pocket and threw on rhythm with a pass rusher bearing down.
On the first, early in the second quarter, he converted a third down by delivering a dart to Geronimo Allison just before blitzing safety Karl Joseph, who bolted through the middle of the line, put Rodgers on his back with a legal shot to the midsection.
On the other, a third down in the fourth quarter, Rodgers fired an incompletion with blitzing linebacker Nicholas Morrow in his face. Morrow flattened Rodgers with a chest-high shot just after the quarterback released that throw.
On both, Rodgers stood in there and took the shot to make the kind of rhythm throw on which LaFleur’s offense thrives.
“Extremely important,” LaFleur said of no-flinch throws. “… Obviously, you never want your quarterback to take those shots, but it’s part of it.”
True on both counts. No team wants its quarterback, especially one who’s 35 years old, taking a lot of shots. That’s a good way to get him carted off the field. On the other hand, to win NFL games, quarterbacks occasionally have to stand in there and take a shot.
In the last few years, the Packers’ offense had gradually devolved to an identity that was strictly Rodgers making plays outside the pocket. Its passing game had lost its rhythm and timing. Instead of Rodgers’ scrambling augmenting the offense, it was the offense.
There’s no question his ability to make plays outside the pocket is important. The Packers’ last two opponents, Detroit and Oakland, recognized that after he killed the Dallas Cowboys making plays on the move. The Raiders and Lions did everything they could to make him stay in the pocket.
But in LaFleur’s quick-rhythm passing game, sometimes the quarterback needs to stand in there and get the ball out rather than take off at the first sign of trouble. Rodgers’ willingness to stand in there a couple times Sunday with a blitzer in his face is a sign he’s buying in.
“That’s what (LaFleur) looks for in quarterbacks,” backup quarterback Tim Boyle said. “Accuracy, timing, good footwork and no-flinch. That’s the intangibles you really can’t coach, when you’ve got a dude barreling in on you and you stay in there and finish your throw. Aaron does that. It’s bad-ass.”
Said Rodgers: “Sometimes (no-flinch throws) are necessary, and you know they’re coming. But I feel good about the timing with the first one to Geronimo. Took a couple shots, but I told Tahir (Whitehead, a Raiders linebacker) out there, I said sometimes taking those shots makes you feel like you’re actually involved in the game. You’re playing and you’re a real football player. Don’t want to take too many of those, but I’m glad I hung in there for a couple.”
Those hits weren’t unnoticed by the Raiders’ offensive guru and quarterback expert, coach Jon Gruden.
“He made a couple great audibles,” Gruden said. “He made a couple great throws. Tough as hell. I mean, we hit him a few times and it didn’t bother him one bit.”
Rodgers probably will feel it more Monday than he did after the game –
“Pretty sore,” was Boyle’s prediction.
He came into Sunday with knee soreness that landed him on the injury report as a limited participant in practice every day for the last two weeks. He didn’t offer much about it Sunday other than the pain flared up because of the excessive rain in Green Bay this fall. That meant the Packers have had to regularly practice on the Field Turf in The Don Hutson Center rather than on their softer outdoor practice fields.
“Some of us older guys don’t always react super positively to a lot of days on turf,” he said.
Regardless, the Packers’ are 6-1 and in first place in the NFC North, a game up on 5-2 Minnesota, as we close in on the halfway point of the regular season.
They’re 6-1 for a couple reasons. One is a much-improved defense that despite having a rough go of it for much of Sunday (Oakland put up 484 yards) made some big plays (two turnovers deep in the red zone), too. The other is that LaFleur is off to a good start in fulfilling mandate No. 1: Creating an environment where Rodgers is back playing like an MVP candidate.
The offense’s sluggish start to the season was no surprise – a new coach learning new players, and players learning a new offense. But the last five weeks has seen this offense in general and the quarterback in particular progressively play better and better.
“We’re starting to learn our players a little bit better, what they do really well,” LaFleur said.
No one’s saying Rodgers is the frontrunner for the MVP – that would be Russell Wilson at this point. But if Rodgers keeps playing like this, and the Packers keep winning, he definitely will be in the conversation.
Then again, it’s still early for such talk. They don’t hand out awards and championships at midseason. Rodgers and the Packers know that as well as anyone. They breezed through the 2011 season at 15-1 but saw it count for absolutely nothing when they were bumped out of the playoffs in the divisional round.
But after a full training camp and seven regular-season games, it’s hard not to think that, at minimum, LaFleur and Rodgers are getting in rhythm.