Pete Dougherty
It’s tough to bet against Aaron Rodgers’ track record when predicting the 2020 Packers’ record.
This NFL season, if it comes off anything approaching normal, should at least tell us whether Matt LaFleur was a one-hit wonder.
Independent analytics experts and oddsmakers think he is after his Green Bay Packers went 13-3 and advanced to the NFC Championship game in his rookie season as coach last year. They’re predicting the Packers will regress in a big way this season.
Do a Google search of NFL oddsmakers, and the highest Packers over-under win total you’ll find is nine. Do a search on NFL analytics and gambling pundits, and they’ll tell you why that win total is set so low after a 13-win 2019.
Here’s the nutshell of the argument, as distilled from a column by ESPN.com’s Bill Barnwell last week in which he predicted the teams in for the biggest slide this season. Let it also be noted that Barnwell has a solid track record in this over the past three seasons: If you would have bet the under on the 16 teams he picked for big drop-offs, 12 would have paid off. Last year, three of his five teams lost a combined 13 games more than the previous year, and a fourth also finished with a worse record.
The argument for a Packers’ slide
rests mostly on their low point differential (plus-63) last season. It was lowest among the 48 teams that have gone 13-3 since 1989.
They also were 8-1 in games decided by a touchdown or less. Without getting lost in the details, nobody wins close games like that year to year. Justis Mosqueda did a study for Optimum Scouting that found of 19 teams that won at least five more one-score games than they lost from 2006 through 2016, a whopping 13 had at least four more losses the next season. That says the Packers probably will regress to the mean.
Barnwell and other pundits point to other factors, too: The Packers’ uncommonly good health last season, as well as a weak schedule (four games against the NFC East, playing Kansas City without league MVP Patrick Mahomes).
So why won’t the 2020 Packers make at least a four-game slide, if not more?
You can find all sorts of reasons to think they won’t fall that far, but a large part of it comes down to Aaron Rodgers.
He is a known quantity, and what we know is he wins (65.3 winning percentage as the Packers’ starter). Whether it’s by blowout, a close finish, or anything in-between, Rodgers wins, at the rate of about two of every three games he starts.
In the 10 seasons he’s started at least 15 games, the Packers have won fewer
Teams that have suffered big drops in their record from one season to the next didn’t have a QB the quality of Aaron Rodgers leading the way.
than 10 games only twice: His first season as starter (6-10 in 2008) and in 2018, the 6-9-1 campaign that got Mike McCarthy fired.
To take the under at nine wins for the Packers this season, you have to believe that Rodgers at age 36 (37 in December) is in the midst of a significant decline.
And sure, there’s evidence to suggest that’s a possibility. His passer rating has been below 98 each of the past three seasons, and he’s had three of his four lowest yard-per-attempt seasons in that same time. His numbers are trending down.
Then again, while the 50 coaches and high-ranking scouts who Mike Sando of the Athletic polled for his annual quarterback rankings dropped Rodgers this season, it was only from No. 1 overall in 2019 to No. 3 this year, behind Mahomes and Russell Wilson. So there’s that.
Also, there’s this: Of the five teams Barnwell picked to regress last year, the only one that beat his prediction had a top-tier quarterback (New Orleans with Drew Brees). The Rams (Jared Goff), Chargers (Philip Rivers), Cowboys (Dak Prescott) and Dolphins (Ryan Fitzpatrick) were the others.
Same for Mosqueda’s research. The only three teams that didn’t regress in his close-game research was the Indianapolis Colts (three times), who had Peyton Manning at quarterback.
LaFleur is the wild card here. There’s just no way to tell if a coach is good after one season. Remember, Ray Rhodes won NFL coach of the year as a rookie coach with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1995, then never made the playoffs again.
The Packers are in their second season in LaFleur’s offense, so they have that going for them. He’s also got a team built more to his outside-zone, play-action system after the drafting of A.J. Dillon and Josiah Deguara in the second and third rounds this year.
We should get a much better feel for LaFleur as coach in Season 2, at least if the COVID-19 virus doesn’t completely upend the season.
Does any of this mean the Packers will be 13-3 again? Not at all. They could better than last year and finish with worse record.
It’s not a given a Rodgers-led team will win have a winning record. As noted earlier, he failed twice. Brett Favre also had two seasons of .500 or worse with the Packers.
There also are the unknowns and potential catastrophes of a season played during a pandemic. Who knows how many games the NFL will get in, and which rosters might get gutted at key times? And maybe the shine will come off LaFleur in his second season at the helm.
But there’s the analytics’ track record and Rodgers’ track record. An over-under of nine? I’d have to take the over.