First Round

Whether your intro song is "Start Me Up" (Rolling Stones), "Let's Get It Started" (Black Eyed Peas) or "Milkshake" (Kelis), you better get it into gear. Let the good blogs roll. The first few responses to Packers/Bears III have been coming in and they are posted below. Just to save everyone from being terminated from their jobs for being published on such a low-functioning website, I have cleverly disguised your real names with impressively lame phrases. Trust me, you'll know who you are...


Our first response, from "Dat Puffey and the Family" from Wauwatosa, WI

What Constitutes an Elite Quarterback?

Since becoming the starting quarterback of the Packers in 2008, one of the biggest criticisms of Aaron Rodgers is his lack of a marquee playoff win. This is a theme that ESPN has beaten into the ground, and has been regurgitated by columnists nationwide including John Czarnecki of Fox Sports and Patrick Clarke of the Bleacher Report. Everybody’s second favorite ESPN NFL Draft analyst, Mel Kiper Jr., went on “The Sports Reporters” a couple weeks ago and reiterated that point, stating that Rodgers needs a playoff win to validate himself as a great quarterback in the NFL.

Terence Moore of Fanhouse took it a step further, making the argument that Rodgers needs a Super Bowl win to be considered elite. In the same column, Moore went on to say that Dan Marino was just a “pretty” quarterback because of his lack of a Championship, so you can interpret that however you’d like.

That being said, I still feel obligated to defend Rodgers against these arguments, as a closer look at his playoff resume will show that he is already well on his way to being an elite quarterback in the NFL, if he isn’t there already.

As I said earlier, prior to these playoffs Rodgers had not won a playoff game as a starting quarterback in the NFL. The ESPN research team really did their homework in digging up this statistic for their audience, combing extensively through his resume of one playoff game, and consequently using this as a promo tool throughout the week for the wild card game against the Eagles. “It’s the Rehabilitated Dog-Fighter vs. Brett Favre’s successor who has never won in the playoffs!!!” (Ok, I made that tagline up, but it’s not a far cry from what we were beaten over the head with all week leading up to that game.)

You read that correctly, one playoff game.

On top of that, the one playoff game that the entire premise was based off of was a 45-51 loss to the Cardinals in 2009, in which he went 28/42, 422 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 1 interception. It seems idiotic to put that loss on his shoulders – despite his overtime fumble leading to Arizona’s game winning field goal – as 45 points should be enough for a win under almost any circumstances. That loss was on the defense.

In these playoffs, he opened with an 18/27, 180 yards, and 3 touchdown performance in hostile Philadelphia. Not a jaw-dropping stat line by any means, but it was enough to get the win, and for some critics, it was enough to get the monkey off his back. He followed that up with an epic 31/36, 366 yards, and 4 total touchdowns performance against the Falcons on Saturday night.

Based on these three games, his average career stat line as an NFL starting quarterback in the playoffs is a 73% completion percentage, 323 yards, 3.67 total touchdowns, and .33 interceptions. On a larger scope, let’s see how this compares to the first three playoff games as a starter (per game averages) for some of the other “elite” quarterbacks in the league.

Name/Completion Pct./Passing Yards/TD’s (passing and running)/Interceptions
Rodgers- 73/323/3.67/.33
Brady*- 57/219/1/.33
Manning- 48/186/.67/.67
Brees- 64/305/1.67/.67
Favre- 60/266/1.67/1

*Due to injury in his 2nd playoff game, I used his 1st, 3rd, and 4th playoff games for these averages.

It would be interesting to see how the media would be treating Rodgers if he hadn’t been the successor to Brett Favre in Green Bay. If he had taken over for Bledsoe, Harbaugh, Flutie or Majkowski would columnists like Moore still be making the claim that he needs to win a Super Bowl to be considered “elite”? (He wrote that column after the Atlanta game)

All told, it seems easy for the national media to make opinion based arguments like these in their critique of Rodgers, because a more thorough analysis of his statistics make his playoff resume very difficult to criticize. Until they come to this realization, I suppose we will have to continue to listen to the debate as to whether or not he is “elite” continue.

If he does go on to win the Super Bowl this season, I am curious to see the direction that the criticism against him will go. We’ve been given a sampling of that this week with life-long Vikings fan, and ProFootballTalk.com’s main contributor Mike Florio’s article in which he attacked Rodgers for failing to give an autograph to a fan that had cancer in the airport after the Atlanta game. Florio clearly did a minimal amount of homework on this story prior to publishing it, and followed it up by defending his initial stance, even after more information emerged on the incident that changed many people’s perspective on the incident.

I am not going to get into the details of the cancer patient snub discussion, as I feel it is overblown (although in retrospect, he probably should have just signed the autograph – though he did sign one for her last week as well and she supposedly goes to the airport after just about every road game), but the point remains. To question whether or not Rodgers is “elite” is turning into an irrelevant discussion.

His numbers speak for themselves, and I have a feeling that ten years from now if he continues to play to his abilities, the “is he an elite quarterback in the NFL?” discussion will turn into “is he one of the all time great quarterbacks in the NFL.”

Go Pack Go


Our second response comes from "DVR" (Dad Van Roy, not to be confused with the TV recording device) from De Pere, WI

"If the weather is clear, we have nothing to fear, Pack by 10"


They're done. Rack 'em both.

Frost