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I’m a big fan of Mark Schrereth, and quote him all the time.
Tremendous football insight and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
But his stuff today about Aaron Rodgers beign at the “kids table” isn’t something I’m on board with.
Here is the quote I’m referring to . . .
“Aaron Rogers (was) a four-time MVP – one Super Bowl. One. The dynasty that never was,” Schlereth said on is podcast. “We called the Green Bay Packers the dynasty that never was. If you invite the greatest quarterbacks of all time to dinner and it’s like Thanksgiving, and there’s one main table and then the kids’ table on the side – Aaron Rodgers is sitting at the kids’ table because he’s got one championship.
“You don’t get to sit with Joe Montana and Tom Brady and multiple Super Bowl winners at the ‘Big Boy Table.’ I’m sorry. Until you find, and I don’t know what the criteria would be, but until you find a better criteria for judging guys.”
So I guess Dan Marino and Brett Favre are at the kid’s table also.
I usually don’t like to get into this sports debate show rhetoric on who is better than who, or who belongs on what Sports Mount Rushmore (by the way, this Mount Rushmore thing is getting tedious).
But this Rodgers “kid’s table” thing is a bit unfair.
Should Rodgers have more than one Super Bowl Championship at this point, perhaps, and maybe some of that is his fault, but to me, some factors have nothing to do with Rodgers not reaching the mountaintop more.
When Ted Thompson was the Packers GM from 2005-17, he wasn’t a big believer in free agency. He liked to build through the draft. That is fine, but when you have a superstar QB like Rodgers, sometimes you gotta bring in some big-time free agents to take advantage of the window you have with this kind of signal-caller.
And there have been some coaching issues over Rodgers’ time in Green Bay, and one that stands out is the special team’s debacles of 2021-22, one of the seasons the QB won the NFL MVP Award.
Headline from CBS Sports – “Packers’ special teams’ blunders driving force behind 49ers booting Green Bay out of playoff. Green Bay’s league-worst special teams unit had a disastrous performance.”
On this bad weather day in Green Bay, not set-up for explosive offenses, the Packers had a 10-3 fourth quarterback lead, but gave the 49ers a gift TD with bad special teams play.
“Nursing a 10-3 lead late in the fourth quarter, the Packers lined up to punt after going three-and-out,” wrote Jared Dubin for CBS Sports. “Issue was, nobody blocked 49ers defensive lineman Jordan Willis, who broke through the line and blocked the kick. Talanoa Hufanga scooped up the ball with nobody near him, and took it into the end zone for a game-tying touchdown.”
The special team’s coordinator, Maurice Drayton, was fired a few days after this game. In retrospect, he should not have been the special team’s coordinator, because the year before, they fired his boss, after a terrible special team season and promoted Drayton. When a unit is broken, who fires the boss, and promotes the man assisting him overseeing a bad unit?
The special teams were so bad under Drayton that he should have probably been replaced in-season, but new-wave coach Matt LaFleur perhaps didn’t have the heart to do it, and it cost them in the playoffs.
Look, I’m not a special pleader for Rodgers, but man, if you do a deep dive into his time in Green Bay, you could strongly argue that they would’ve had more rings if some of the coaching and personnel decisions were better.
July 10, 2024
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