Are the Packers not the team we thought they were? | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Senior NFL Writer Charles Robinson and Josh Norris from the Underdog Football Show discuss the Packers’ surprising start to the season. Is Green Bay just not a very good team? Or did Aaron Rodgers and company just come out of the starting blocks extremely sluggish? Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
CHARLES ROBINSON: Green Bay was the one that I just, on Sunday, I couldn't believe. I ended up writing about it. Like, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Like, just after everything that happened in the offseason, you know, you really think, hey, they're gonna come out, they're gonna put the number on, you know, every team, right out of the gate. I think it was, you know, a hot Super Bowl pick coming into the season. And, instead, they just get absolutely destroyed, ineffective in almost every possible way against the New Orleans Saints. They're going to play Detroit. They're going home. You know, it's great. You get Lambeau, you know, Monday Night Football. Great. That'll be awesome.
But I just-- one of the things that you talked about with health, you know, with snap count. Their offensive line is already shorthanded, OK? You've got injuries on the offensive line there. I think, defensively, I don't know that I saw a drastically different unit, or even play style, or scheming that was really different than last season, so I don't know what really changes defensively. Is there a possibility that maybe Green Bay is-- maybe everything was-- that that was the perfect season, that everything went right in the season last year, and, you know, Rodgers wins the MVP, he's playing perfect.
You know, my MVP vote, through the course of last season, and I don't mean this with animus, but I did everything I could, over the course of the season, to not move off of Pat Mahomes. But then, as I got closer to the end of the season, all I heard, you know, especially out of Green Bay, was, no, he's playing so well, he's lifting everybody on our roster right now. Like, you know, you have to-- And now, kind of looking back, I'm like, wow, you know, was this-- and they did have some injuries-- but was this sort of a season of perfection, and are we on the verge of sort of finding that out rudely?
JOSH NORRIS: I feel like running hot is the theme of today's show. Yeah, fantasy football does a pretty good job of, like, encapsulating the public's view on a player or a team heading into a year, and I think we forget, like, there were a lot of doubts heading into Aaron Rodgers, obviously, prior to last season, you know, and part of the reason why that team drafted a quarterback.
I will push back a little bit about the offensive line. Now, they are without David Bakhtiari, who's, like, the best pass pro left tackle in the NFL, but, like, in his spot, Elgton Jenkins played tremendously well, and he's someone who might have to get left tackle in the future, even if he plays right tackle.
I think part of it was there was just no rhythm and there was no flow. I think Aaron Rodgers said this, like, until they got the ball with less than two minutes to go in the end of the first half, they had only run, like, 12 plays.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Right. They had barely touched it. Yeah.
JOSH NORRIS: Right. And so, if you're punting for a variety of reasons over, and over, and over, and then, as you alluded to, a defense that has a lot of pieces, and has had a lot of pieces for a while, and a lot of draft investment, but haven't, like, found the right coach to hit on and, like, use all of them together, then it's still just like a unit. It's still individuals, and it needs to be like a team defense. Brandon Staley did a great job of that with the Chargers, like, turning individual players into, like, a cohesive defensive unit.
The other part about the Packers is this. Like, it is very much a narrow skill set skill position group. Like, you have Davante Adams. You have Aaron Jones. Last year, Robert Tonyan emerged. And, like, that's it. And so it's not one where you can have, like, a bunch of other pieces, like, pick up from the other. Like, I think the relationship between Davante Adams and Aaron Rodgers has to be perfect, and then Aaron Jones kind of has to hit, and that's your best options. And so that did last year. It's just not one of these loaded offenses that we see across the league that can, like, pick up for the losses that other people have.
