The dumbest part of the ‘woe is Aaron Rodgers’ argument
So as we all collectively learned about a month ago, and just hours before the start of the 2021 NFL Draft, Packers superstar quarterback Aaron Rodgers is reportedly unhappy with his current situation in Green Bay, and seeking a move elsewhere could be in his near future.
Below is the original tweet/report — a near facsimile of the summation I just provided, meaning one of the two (i.e. the former) is probably a complete waste of words on my part. Whoops.
Now as a lifelong Packers fan that was kind of a bummer. But instead of engaging with the entire cavalcade of (few) semi-interesting, (mostly) boring/nonsensical debates that ensued in its aftermath, I’d rather focus my energy on one specific ‘talking point’ on the subject.
(This also gives me the excuse to focus exactly zero percent of my emotional attention on the possibility that arguably the best quarterback in NFL history might no longer be slinging the pigskin for my favorite team next season.)
And thus, the following takedown will serve to combat these sorts of great examples of how people, especially in sports, love to repeat an argument or mantra over and over again until it eventually becomes accepted as at least semi-factual — context or even legitimate supporting evidence behind it be damned.
So let’s see. How does this go?
The Packers haven’t used a first round draft pick on a skill position player since 2002.
The above heading is 100 percent true. That’s not in question.
Within nearly the past two decades, if you’re looking for a first round designation to appear next to any running back, receiver or even tight end on the annual NFL Draft summary for the Green Bay Packers, you won’t find one — because it hasn’t happened.
In fact, since 1991 — some guy named Brett Favre’s first season as a pro — only twice has the organization done so.
That’s 31 drafts, folks.
Of course the trouble comes in when one elects to extrapolate said original, true statement beyond the confines to which it immediately applies.
Utter that sentence in the sports media landscape today and the implicit definition is not really that “The Packers haven’t used a first round draft pick on a skill position player since 2002,” but rather, ‘Green Bay has actively screwed over its future Hall of Fame signal caller by ‘not giving him any help.’
The actual statement stands on its own.
Concluding any additional meaning and/or causality/correlation from it? Well that would require active, rational thought — a concept folks tend to struggle with more and more these days.
So why is utilizing ‘If A then B’ deduction for this idea such a surface level, lazy ill-informed exercise by most of the people blathering on about it?
Well, because it’s actually quite possible for one to both be an excellent skill position player and also not have been drafted in the first round. In fact, during Rodgers’ tenure in Green Bay the team has had quite a lot of them.
(The following breakdown will be stat-heavy and lengthy — a reflection of my considerable disdain for the lackluster premise being addressed — and as such will be broken up into three separate eras for the purposes of my not wanting you to quit reading with a seemingly interminable amount to go.)
The early years
Greg Jennings (a 2006 second round pick) arrived a year after Rodgers. In their first four full seasons together Jennings would log 291 catches for over 4600 yards, 34 touchdowns and two Pro Bowl appearances.
James Jones (third round — 2007) came next, and as a largely tertiary option at receiver over a combined seven years with Rodgers nabbed 313 receptions for 4500-plus yards and 43 TD’s — including a league leading 14 scores in 2012.
Jordy Nelson (second round — 2008), aka ‘The Footballin’ Farmer’ then followed, joined by tight end Jermichael Finley (third round) in the same draft class.
From 2011–16 (minus a 2015 season lost to injury), Nelson scored 57 touchdowns, amassing nearly 400 receptions and 6100 yards (397/6098) in the process.
During that span his annual league-wide standing across multiple receiving categories were as follows:
- Top seven in total receptions (twice)
- Top 10 in receiving yards (four times)
- Top 10 in yards/game (three times)
- Top three in receiving TD’s (three times) — including a league leading 14 in 2016 coming off of season-ending injury the year prior.
Over his entire nine-year career as a Packer (almost exclusively catching passes from Rodgers) Nelson tallied over 600 receptions, and just shy of 8000 yards and 70 TD’s.
Finley meanwhile, is one of the bigger What If’s in recent Green Bay history. An ideal, albeit at times inconsistent, ‘modern tight end’ with size, athleticism and fluidity, his career was cut short by a severe neck/spinal cord injury at age 26.
But as a young player in the league he was undoubtedly a weapon for some outstanding Packer offenses. In 2009, 2011 and 2012, his healthiest/most productive seasons, Finley posted 171 catches for 2110 yards and 15 TD’s.
Let me just reiterate that I couldn’t care less that none of the aforementioned players weren’t first round draft picks. They each turned out to be very good, even great players at their respective positions, draft picks be damned.
Yes, excellent QB play makes life easier on the guys running the routes. And I’ve already stated that Rodgers is the best I’ve ever personally seen play his position, fan allegiances aside. But plenty of other receivers have come and gone through Lambeau field with the same benefit of Rodgers’ rocket arm and never produced at anywhere near the levels of the players I’m mentioning.
It takes two to tango, folks.
Phase Two
The aforementioned quartet of post-Rodgers draftees largely carried the load through 2012–13, with Nelson the lone holdover who would continue to star in Green & Gold for the next three-plus years.
But before that line of delineation had passed, second rounder Randall Cobb joined the fray circa 2011.
His opening act?
Not too shabby.
Eventually growing into a secondary target role in the slot behind Nelson, Cobb averaged 75 catches, for 867 yards and nearly seven TD’s in his five healthiest seasons (peaking at 91/1287/12) as a primary starter for the Pack, his end largely coinciding with Nelson’s.
After Cobb came our first running back on this list, 2013 second rounder Eddie Lacy, and just in time for a team whose only real productive bell cow alongside Rodgers had been Ryan Grant’s consecutive 1200-plus yard seasons in 2008–09.
Lacy’s star burnt brightly, albeit quickly (let’s not get into the bodyweight issues that had him out of Green Bay by year four, the NFL by year five), as he posted back-to-back 1100-plus yard rushing seasons with 20 TD’s, accounting for an additional 77 receptions for four TD’s through the air.
The Alabama alumnus’ three-year run of high level productivity for the Packers amounted to nearly 4000 total yards and 29 scores.
Brief, but impactful was Lacy’s stint alongside Rodgers.
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The third homegrown member of this phase of the QB #12 support group is by far and away its most notable.
Now considered one of, if not the very best receiver in the NFL today, Davante Adams (2014 second round pick) arrived just in time to serve as the third banana to Nelson/Cobb, both of whom then put up career years in front of the rookie wideout.
By year three it was Adams at the top of the pecking order, establishing a baseline of one thousand-plus yards and double-digit touchdowns that he’s essentially reached in almost every season since.
In four of the past five seasons Adams has finished first or second league-wide in receiving scores, and in each of the past three he’s also been top five in catches per game.
Amidst the thick of a global pandemic in 2020, all he did was produce the greatest single season for his position in the franchise’s 101 year history.
Yet another second round selection, any team in the league would kill to have a player like Adams. But oddly enough, for the crowd obsessed with the specific lack of first round skill players drafted in Green Bay, facts such as this one rarely get mentioned.
Latest additions
Circa 2017 draft weekend, the next two most impactful additions to Rodgers’ skill position portfolio count as somewhat of a package deal.
Running backs Jamaal Williams (fourth round) and Aaron Jones (fifth round) hardly drew much praise upon initial selection, but have produced as perhaps the most underrated, versatile duo at their position in the years since.
After primarily serving in back-up roles as rookies, the two have compiled almost 5350 combined yards rushing and 47 touchdowns in their four years calling Lambeau Field home, all the while hauling in more than 250 receptions for another 2000-plus yards and 14 TD’s through the air.
A lot of that production would take a big leap the past two seasons under new head coach Matt LaFleur, including:
- 59% of rushing yards
- 60% of rushing TD’s
- 66% of receptions
- 65% of receiving yards
- 79% of receiving TD’s
The less publicized of the two, Williams (now a Detroit Lion) fumbled exactly zero times in his 622 career touches as a Packer.
Jones, meanwhile, has topped the NFL leaderboards in both total/rushing TD’s (2019) and rushing yards/carry (2018), as well as posting consecutive top nine finishes in yards from scrimmage (2019–20), and last season earned top five marks in rushing yards, yards/carry and yards/game.
So in summation, it has been with this aforementioned collection of ‘homegrown’ skill position draft picks (not including free agent or undrafted signings) that the Packers under 13 years of Rodgers’ command have nine times finished among the NFL’s top ten in scoring offense — including seven instances in the top five, and thrice first overall.
- Meanwhile, not previously listed, a guy like undrafted TE Robert Tonyan out of Indiana State, was not only was robbed of a 2020 Pro-Bowl selection (52 catches on 59 targets for almost 600 yards and 11 TD’s), but tied for fifth in the NFL and first amongst tight ends in touchdown receptions.
Ten cumulative Pro-Bowls and a single All-Pro selection across that timespan will be viewed as underwhelming to some folks (though the ‘integrity’ of a Pro Bowl selection wanes by the year). However, the most important aspects — both team and individual production — have largely been there, so who really cares?
Answer: Those dead set on convincing the average fan that Rodgers has been saddled with nothing but a bunch of bums for the entirety of his Packers career.
The ‘non-skilled’
Of course success on offense and at quarterback aren’t solely reliant upon the skill positions.
Running backs need space to run, receivers time to get open and a quarterback needs protection.
That’s where the hog mollies up front come in.
The same 2008-present timeline I’ve spent the previous portions of this piece covering? It also includes five Packer offensive line draftees who’ve earned Pro-Bowl status (three at least twice), two All-Pro honorees and a sixth whom, despite a lack of ‘official accolades,’ has been widely regarded as one of the top tier right tackles in football over the past decade when healthy.
Bryan Bulaga is the latter of those players — and he also happens to be the only one of the six to call himself a first round draft pick (2010).
Fourth rounders Josh Sitton (2008) and T.J. Lang (2009) — four and two-time Pro-Bowler’s respectively — anchored the interior at both guard spots for eight years apiece.
The 2020 Green Bay front alone included All-Pro’s at left tackle (future Hall of Famer David Bakhtiari), center (Corey Linsley), and a Pro-Bowl guard (Elgton Jenkins).
Packers management found Bakhtiari in the fourth round of 2013’s draft.
Linsley arrived a year later courtesy of the fifth.
Jenkins was a second rounder in 2019.
That’s just another ample group of long-time (or in the case of Jenkins, soon-to-be long-time) high level NFL players for the Packer offense surrounding Aaron Rodgers.
And none of which — sans Bulaga — were drafted in the first round.
So where does this leave us?
Hopefully by this juncture my point has been sufficiently well-illustrated.
(i.e. It is a really dumb foundation for the ‘Rodgers has had no help’ argument to base it around a lack of first round draft picks at the skill positions.)
In a lot of cases the initial statement hasn’t even been true. Plenty (not all) of his supporting casts have been buoyed by excellent individual playmakers, and for good measure, linemen up front.
This past season’s starting Packer offense featured six Pro Bowler’s — running back, receiver, left tackle, left guard and center, plus Rodgers at quarterback (Tonyan at tight end should’ve made it seven) — four of whom made First Team All-Pro in Rodgers, Adams, Bakhtiari and Linsley.
I’m just not interested in folks who base their case (for anything) upon false/faulty logic, or who think that by (without context) repeating a surface-level tidbit of information over and over again they’ve somehow arrived at an unassailable conclusion.
That’s just dumb. And dumb is boring.
If you’re hellbent on willfully subjecting me to such an argument than I’m happy to willfully tune out the rest of said content proceeding from that point onward.
I mean it’s not as though I find the Packers to be exempt from any sort of criticism in this present ‘ordeal.’
I think the selection of Jordan Love a year ago was a combination of misguided/premature. I think they should have invested more capital — be it through higher draft picks or free agency — at the skill positions around 2016/17 as guys like Nelson and Cobb were nearing the end of their runs. This would have alleviated the pressure on Adams/Rodgers from being so singularly relied upon to carry the passing game.
Instead, during a three-year ‘rut’ the offense finished on average about 17th in scoring, before a refurbished, more balanced unit led the league once again in 2020.
Those are conversations that, even as a Cheesehead-loving Packer fan, I’m more than happy to engage in. And the same principle applies to sports across the board.
All I’m really seeking is for whatever angles/viewpoints are introduced to these conversations be done in good (logical) faith.
And the spirit of the ‘no skill position first round draft picks’ talking point regarding Aaron Rodgers’ present status as a Packer is almost universally, decidedly not so.
Do better, folks.
