Did Aaron Rodgers make a mistake re-signing with the Packers? | You Pod To Win The Game
Yahoo Sports Senior NFL Writer Charles Robinson and NFL Writer Frank Schwab discuss the Green Bay Packers disastrous 15-9 loss to the Detroit Lions and debate if Aaron Rodgers made a mistake returning to Green Bay this season.
Video Transcript
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FRANK SCHWAB: The Detroit Lions--
CHARLES ROBINSON: Bro--
FRANK SCHWAB: --beat the Green Bay Packers 15 to 9. And if you watched this game, it was just awful. And Aaron Rodgers isn't 2015 Peyton Manning, OK? He's not washed up. He's not dead. But I think we've all been thrown off the scent of Rodgers' decline because we keep blaming the receivers every single game. And Rodgers plays into this. Every time he misses a pass, he's got his arms up in the air, and the cameras catch him. And we're all like, oh, somebody must have run a wrong route.
CHARLES ROBINSON: This was pretty bad though.
FRANK SCHWAB: Maybe you just missed a pass, Aaron. This was awful. He was-- I mean, he threw two red-zone interceptions right away on goal-to-go situations. And, one, what are they doing calling a play to Bakhtiari? But he got nothing on that pass.
CHARLES ROBINSON: No, it was awful.
FRANK SCHWAB: Aidan Hutchinson picks it off. The play call was bad, and the pass was worse. He missed a couple of other passes. It's just-- you cannot, if you are an elite quarterback still, no matter who's around you really, get only 9 points against the 2022 Detroit Lions defense. It's just awful.
And now I guess until further notice, they're kind of irrelevant, right? They're 3 and 6. They're five losses behind the Minnesota Vikings right now. Five losses. The Minnesota Vikings are basically division champs already. And the Packers are what? Even if we're like, well, their season's not dead, they could get a wildcard, does this team have the talent to do that? They just put up 9 points against the Lions.
CHARLES ROBINSON: I sat there, and as I watched it, I thought, OK, God, there are a ton of injuries. And this is wild how many guys are going-- I think it was like eight, nine guys that went out with injury in this game.
FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah, they did.
CHARLES ROBINSON: That's unbelievable.
FRANK SCHWAB: They had a lot of injuries.
CHARLES ROBINSON: That said, you can still evaluate some of the things that Rodgers was doing. And to me, one of the great ones to evaluate is just go and look at the interception that he threw to Aidan Hutchinson, OK? It had no business whatsoever being thrown the way that it was thrown. He was turning, off-balance, fading backward, and it had no arm in it. It was like a Carson Wentz move.
And I was like, that's not what you see from Aaron Rodgers. This entire game, he's cursing. He's on the sideline all pissed off. He's angry about everything. Now, look, was it perfect the entire game for him? No, Sammy Watkins, at one point in the end zone, runs the wrong route.
FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah.
CHARLES ROBINSON: That was a horrible mistake by Sammy. Fine. The point I ended up making-- and I wrote on this-- was, look, there's enough data in here, OK? And there's enough understanding of this team looking forward to do the math with his age, to do the math with the age of the guys around him, and go both parties made a mistake here. Straight up.
Aaron Rodgers should have stuck to the plan, which was I'm going to go to Denver. When the season is over, I'm going to ask for a trade to the Denver Broncos, go there, be with Nathaniel Hackett. He should have stuck to the plan, OK? And frankly, the Packers should have stuck to the plan and gone we're not going to blow out this guy's extension, unless we know 100% we're getting Davante Adams back into the fold.
And their mistake was not working harder with Davante Adams on getting that extension, which pissed him off and motivated him to leave. But the second they knew Adams was out the door, they should have thrown the breaks. Because Rodgers wasn't-- his deal was not signed at that point, OK? It was not straight up signed.
Now they have to deal with not only having that contract, not only having Adams out the door, showing all of the flaws that he clearly was covering for a while, but now you're going to approach an offseason where a legitimate question is going to be, do you trade Rodgers? Which either take all the cap hit, $40 million in 2023, or you split up that $40 million over 2023 and 2024. You trade him post June 1. Or does Rodgers retire? Because--
FRANK SCHWAB: Right.
CHARLES ROBINSON: --the third option is this.
FRANK SCHWAB: And it ain't good
CHARLES ROBINSON: It might get better. There might be some health, OK? But if you're going to embrace this, it means you're going to have to aggressively, in the offseason, go and find him bigger pieces to help him do the Brady thing in Tampa when Tom went down there and was surrounded by a ton of good players. Because guess what, he's not the elevate guy anymore. He's not. He's just--
FRANK SCHWAB: No.
CHARLES ROBINSON: OK.
FRANK SCHWAB: Perfectly reasonable quarterback. But, yeah, he's not the guy who, hey, take any 10 teammates and go score 40 points. He ain't that dude no more. He's still good.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Right.
FRANK SCHWAB: He's still a quality quarterback. I mean, we're, what, eight months removed from him winning MVP or whatever. Their floor is probably 6 and 11, 5 and 12. If you scored 9 points against the Detroit Lions, anything is possible, as Kevin Garnett would say. You are bad at offensive football at that point. It's just shocking. It's shocking where we are with the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rodgers.