GREEN BAY, Wis. — Aaron Rodgers paused.
“I’ll try and say this nicely,” he said.
Staring out into the Packers’ locker room, Rodgers let the words dangle. After an off-season of change and criticism, of different coaches expecting him to adapt and former teammates sniping at his leadership style, he is ever more attuned to his role within the team dynamic. At this late stage of his career, Rodgers said he knows when to project calmness or quiet strength through how he speaks — and to whom.
Seeking to minimize anxiety among younger teammates, Rodgers has taken to what he recently called overcommunicating. By waiting three seconds before resuming his thought, Rodgers seemed to prove his point.
“My brain and responsibilities, it operates at a different level than other positions,” Rodgers said in an interview. “Everybody has different responsibilities. And it’s important that when I’m trying to convey a message that it’s as clear as possible. Even if in my own brain it might be crystal clear, I’ve got to make sure I’m thinking about it from their perspective. I think that’s the most important thing that I have to do as a quarterback.”
Rodgers spoke four days after he wrecked the Oakland Raiders on Oct. 20 at Lambeau Field, throwing for 429 yards and recording the first perfect passer rating of his splendid career. The crazy thing is, he kind of predicted it.
After a wobbly opening month, he started feeling more comfortable and confident, and after throwing his first touchdown against the Raiders, he sidled over to his new coach, Matt LaFleur, and said he wanted to throw four more. So he did.
That performance, the inflection point of Green Bay’s joyful return to the N.F.C. elite, offered evidence that Rodgers’s capabilities endure. The Packers (8-2) head into Sunday’s matchup at N.F.C. West-leading San Francisco with their best record through 10 games since 2011, when they started 13-0. That year, the statistical apex of his career, Rodgers won the first of his two Most Valuable Player awards.
In his 15th season, and less than two weeks from his 36th birthday, Rodgers depends more on teammates than he ever has. He is shielded by a stout offensive line and abetted by rushing and receiving threat Aaron Jones on an offense that through Week 11 ranked second in red-zone efficiency and fifth in points per possession. The Packers no longer rely on Rodgers’s weekly passing eruptions the way they did when he collected the award, but he is communicating better than he ever has and contributes something totally different to their success.
“He’s taken ownership of what’s happened here the last few years of us not going to the playoffs, us being bad, because we were a bad team,” right tackle Bryan Bulaga said. “For him, that’s personal. I feel like his leadership role — it’s quadrupled. He’s speaking more, he’s more vocal.”
Bulaga has been with the Packers since 2010, which means he has protected Rodgers for almost a decade. Stability is appreciated in Green Bay, but by the time Coach Mike McCarthy was fired last Dec. 2, after a dreadful home loss to Arizona, the Packers welcomed a change. A partnership that had produced eight consecutive playoff berths and a Super Bowl title had become untenable.
“The whole thing was like a reset,” Rodgers said. “You go through the grieving process of a system and friendships — I worked with Mike for so long — and then you start to embrace the changes. You understand things will be different.”
The Packers upended standard operating procedure at 1265 Lombardi Avenue, first by hiring LaFleur after one season as the offensive coordinator in Tennessee, tasking him with rejuvenating Rodgers after four years of decline. Then by bingeing in free agency, which Green Bay had avoided for years. The Packers added players like linebackers Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith and safety Adrian Amos, who have stabilized the defense while enlivening the locker room.
LaFleur does not like the word “culture,” at least as it relates to the workplace vibe. All he did, he said, was act upon the question he asked himself — “Where have I had the most fun in my coaching career?” What resonated with him most were his two years working for Dan Quinn in Atlanta, so LaFleur sought to engender within the Packers the same atmosphere, competitive but loose: table tennis exhibitions and haunted house excursions, “Name That Tune” contests and free-throw tournaments.
In a spelling bee during training camp, Rodgers outlasted teammates and coaches until only he and the defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine, remained. In a sudden-death round, Pettine won a coin toss and opted to spell “conscientious” rather than pass. It was a wise decision, Rodgers said, since he would have spelled it correctly.
That cool certainty, laced with stubbornness, is as much a part of Rodgers’s personality as his memory. He said that he could recall every offensive system he had played in since high school, and he played in none so long as McCarthy’s. For 13 seasons Rodgers was accustomed to hearing certain plays and associating visuals of specific concepts, translating what he saw into split-second reads. In LaFleur’s offense, the dialect he had spoken fluently, with such eloquence, was as outdated as a VCR, putting him on an equal learning curve with his teammates.
“The one thing that we used when we first came here was, ‘We all have to get comfortable with the uncomfortable,’” LaFleur said in an interview. “There was going to be certain things that we may ask you to do that you haven’t done in a long time, or maybe never done, period. But I think he’s had a really open mind.”
Rodgers needed to form new positive memories and mental images to help him think about the proper things when the play call came in, when he broke the huddle, when he was at the line of scrimmage. The calls in LaFleur’s offense are longer — so long that earlier this season Rodgers wore a play-calling wristband to facilitate a faster tempo — because many have two plays integrated into the terminology. If before he cherished having freedom at the line to audible into other plays, now he has built-in options dependent on the defensive look or coverage.
Hard into training camp, Rodgers was still translating, and it wasn’t until mid-August, he said, that he started breaking the huddle without thinking about the old play.
“It’s maybe much like someone who goes and lives in a different country, whether it’s school or work or whatever it might be, a walkabout,” Rodgers said. “When you start thinking about words and phrases in this new language, it does change your perspective. That’s when you feel like you’ve had that mental retraining.”
Rodgers’s rapport with LaFleur is especially critical. Both men value trust and communication as the underpinnings of their relationship. It has developed organically, from a series of early phone calls to a meeting in Arizona in late March to the daily interaction — such as an animated sideline discussion in Week 2 that they say they quickly resolved — that has forged their compatibility.
LaFleur has asked his quarterback to operate more under center, to conform without sacrificing his essence, but listened when Rodgers expressed his own preferences. In the red zone and in the two-minute drill, LaFleur has given Rodgers “total control.” LaFleur might suggest a play, but Rodgers has the autonomy to use it or to choose something else.
For LaFleur to cede that power required a certain amount of faith. As the Packers’ offense tottered in September, ranking 28th of 32 teams in yards per play (4.83) and yards per game (286.7) across the first three weeks, according to Pro Football Reference, Rodgers and his teammates reciprocated by maintaining their belief in LaFleur’s scheme.
“In years past, even when we struggled, you always had a feeling that the system worked and it’s going to work itself out at some point,” Rodgers said. “The biggest thing for us, especially starting the season, was trust. And we had to trust that it was going to start trending in the right direction.”
In a Week 5 victory at Dallas, Rodgers didn’t throw any touchdowns — Aaron Jones ran for all four. But one of his former favorite targets, James Jones, watched at AT&T Stadium with another, Jordy Nelson, and they were impressed that nine players caught passes.
“When you see a quarterback getting everybody involved,” James Jones, now an analyst for NFL Network, said in a telephone interview, “that lets you know right there that he understands the whole offense, where everybody’s supposed to be and when they’re supposed to be there.”
That is the expectation of every quarterback, and yet only some master it. Even fewer terrify defenses season after season with their capacity for the sublime. Rodgers showcased it throughout Green Bay’s Week 8 victory at Kansas City, completing passes under duress and from a variety of arm angles, but particularly on a third-and-1 early in the fourth quarter, with the score tied, 17-17. Chased by two defenders, Rodgers, off his back foot, side-armed a pass from 14 yards behind the line of scrimmage that zipped just over the hands of Jimmy Graham and into those of Jamaal Williams, streaking toward the back corner of the end zone.
Only a few quarterbacks on the planet would have had the awareness, ability and confidence to complete that pass. After the game, Rodgers said it was a safe throw. LaFleur said it was one of the best passes, if not the best, he had seen in person.
See, they do not always agree. But 10 months into their alliance, Rodgers and LaFleur — and let’s try to say this nicely — are soaring together.
Source: Football - nytimes.com
