Aaron Rodgers' 4 TDs expands MVP race, opens questions about future in Green Bay
Charles Robinson & Frank Schwab recap the Green Bay Packers 45-30 win over the Chicago Bears. Aaron Rodgers threw an incredible 4 TDs and reinserted himself into the MVP race alongside Kyler Murray and Tom Brady. Still a question lingers about whether Rodgers will be in Green Bay beyond this season.
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Video Transcript
CHARLES ROBINSON: Frank, I think Aaron Rodgers-- we should just go ahead and change his name. We'll hyphenate it, Aaron Rodgers-Halas-McCaskey-- whatever else indicates him as a Chicago Bears owner. Man, he really, truly does. I mean, just it's ridiculous. He absolutely whoops on the Bears, puts himself squarely into the MVP race. I am now convinced actually-- I kind of feel like however the NFC one seed pans out, it's probably gonna end up that that will be the front-runner for the MVP race.
FRANK SCHWAB: Really?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, I mean, the three big--
FRANK SCHWAB: That surprises me.
CHARLES ROBINSON: --dogs are all the NFC quarterbacks, right? It's Rodgers, Tom Brady, and you convinced me to continue to look at Kyler Murray. So is that not the trio of quarterbacks reaching for the belt?
FRANK SCHWAB: I don't think you're wrong. I just figured that Brady had it, especially when he throws that walk-off today. And it's like, all right, what--
CHARLES ROBINSON: Oh, I'm not--
FRANK SCHWAB: --are we doing here?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Hey, I'm not denying he's the leader.
FRANK SCHWAB: Right. The narrative is gonna be so strong at the end that even-- I think even if Tampa Bay gets the two seed, and Aaron Rodgers and the Packers get the one seed, I still think just the narrative of, oh, we have a 44-year-old MVP, it's gonna be too much. I think Brady wins it.
But you're right about Rodgers. He looked great. The Bears-- I mean, the Bears hit like five big plays in this game. And all of a sudden, it's like they're getting this big play, that big-- a 97-yard punt return. And they still end up losing by 15. It's like at some point, the Bears just have to be-- what do we got to do? What do we have to do to catch these guys? We're so far behind. And that's been going on basically since 1992 when Brett Favor took over at quarterback. You talk about owning them, Favre did too. It's just decades of this now.
So you know what, the one thing this game-- I mean, it was kind of whatever. The Packers are just a better team. The one thing that was really interesting to me-- and I'm really curious your reaction to this. Al and Cris on the NBC broadcast, for a while-- they spend a few minutes on this talking about we met Aaron Rodgers, production meeting. And you know these guys open up during production meetings.
And they said they came away with the sense that Aaron Rodgers is staying in Green Bay, that he wants to stay in Green Bay. And I was like, wait, what? This is-- and I wondered your reaction to that. Because even Al and Cris were like, look, we're not trying to break news here. It's just a hunch. We're just--
CHARLES ROBINSON: Right.
FRANK SCHWAB: So I wonder what your reaction was to that. Because that's what stuck out to me. I was like, wow, that's a little bit interesting.
CHARLES ROBINSON: My reaction is everything's going really well. Aaron's really happy. He's got Randall Cobb on the team. Everything's frosting right now, OK, for the Packers. My reaction is also I have been there after the NFC Championship losses, OK? I have been there and known the hole that he goes into losing to the San Francisco 49ers, the hole that he goes into losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And if this ends the same way, I'm gonna tell you exactly how this is gonna play out.
My sense is that if he loses any game prior to the Super Bowl, OK, NFC title game, anything earlier than that, unless he just plays absolutely out of his mind, what's going to happen is the same thing that happened in the last couple of years. He's gonna get flak from the fanbase that says, oh, he did this or he did that or fell short because of this or that. And, remember, last year was a remarkably, remarkably successful season that honestly was, I thought, achieved by the skin of their teeth, if you really looked at a lot of the games, OK?
FRANK SCHWAB: Oh, sure. Yeah.
CHARLES ROBINSON: And then everybody kind of went the opposite way on him going down the stretch. But he even kind of raised the specter of not knowing what the future held, all this stuff. The only thing that would make me feel differently about this is if he's telling Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth that he's saying, look, Gutekunst is listening to me. Brian Gutekunst the general manager, he's listening. We've knocked down what these barriers were. I'm great with Matt LaFleur. I'm fine with Mark Murphy, the team's CEO.
Hey, we're good. We're in fantastic shape right now. Then maybe I would feel a little bit differently about that. I just know that right now, he feels good, OK? And there's no consistency in terms of Aaron Rodgers' emotions when it comes to December, January, and February, OK? There's just none. There's nothing we can count on.
It's great that they say that. It was interesting. And in production meetings, you know, a lot of interesting things-- it's something that Terez and I talked about in the past about how in these production meetings, you watch these broadcasts, and you get some nuggets because these quarterbacks in particular spend one-on-one time with the production staff. And they say all kinds of stuff that they won't normally say. But I just-- I've been through this two years in a row now with this, and I know that emotionally he could be in a much deeper hole than this if things don't work out at the end of the season.
