Big Dog Yank wrote:VooDoo7 wrote:Not that stats tell the whole story. And I know QB rating isn't the end-all, be-all when it comes to comparing QBs. But Aaron Rodgers career QB rating in the playoffs is 100.1. Tom Brady's is 90.4. Lets not act like Rodgers was a playoff bum. He hasn't had defenses backing him like Brady had his whole career.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but I just don't understand this whole Rodgers being a playoff choker narrative that has developed over the past couple of months. He absolutely has culpability for January's loss to the Niners, but the special teams' epic pants crapping and the offensive line playing like a sieve are well documented.
Beyond that, you've gotta go pretty far back to find a playoff game that was clearly subpar for him...and when you do that, you'll come across plenty of outstanding postseason performances and some absolute dogsh*t rosters he dragged into the playoffs.
So much of this conversation illustrates how absolutely spoiled we are as a fan base that we'll chose to obsess over the outlier poor performances while willfully overlooking a dozen plus years of playoff excellence.
Yeah, he's been very good in the playoffs. Would they have more titles if his playoff numbers were as great as his regular season numbers? Of course, and he deserves some share of the blame for that. But defense and/or special teams has been about 10x more to blame in nearly every single playoff loss I can remember, thought not quite all of them of course.
The Packers gave up just over 37 ppg in their first 9 playoff losses after their last title. Even with their weather-assisted great defensive game against SF this year, their opponents are still averaging 35 ppg in their last 10 playoff losses. Rodgers's average defensive support is literally, by basically any metric, about twice as bad as any other HOF QB who made the playoffs almost every year of his career in the last 30 years.
Also, you should expect QB ratings to go down in the playoffs because you're playing with the same offense against defenses that are better on average almost by definition - well, unless you're playing against the Packers of course. And Rodgers has played against some of the best defenses the NFL could offer during his career (Urlacher Bears, Seattle, SF a few years ago). In fact, 8 of his 11 playoff losses are against top-10 scoring defenses.
He does lock in on certain receivers and hold the ball a little too long in those games. He probably should have run close to the goal line against TB last year. But that just goes to show that he has usually had to be all but perfect in order for the Packers to get to the Super Bowl, and as much as they're paying him, they're not paying him enough to expect perfection. This year was probably one of just 3 or 4 playoff games since their title in which he didn't earn his salary. That's a good rate.
Wut we've got here is... faaailure... to communakate.
