Is Aaron Rodgers even good anymore?

[Joemailman]

Peter Bukowski
This is the bottom line: Aaron Rodgers is hyper competitive. That makes him sensitive, not just to perceived slights, but to the people around him. If they're not working as hard as him, he resents that. Mike McCarthy wasn't working hard enough. Rodgers lost respect for him.


Ok, but who is Peter Bukowski?

He apparently used to write for Packerswire. https://packerswire.usatoday.com/201...de-to-defense/

[Joemailman]

Peter Bukowski
This is the bottom line: Aaron Rodgers is hyper competitive. That makes him sensitive, not just to perceived slights, but to the people around him. If they're not working as hard as him, he resents that. Mike McCarthy wasn't working hard enough. Rodgers lost respect for him.


Ok, but who is Peter Bukowski?

He sure has a lot to say about Rodgers and McCarthy. https://twitter.com/Peter_Bukowski?r...Ctwgr%5Eauthor

[denverYooper]

TJ Lang Retweeted
John Kuhn
Verified account @kuhnj30
49m49 minutes ago

Never knew my coach to get a massage instead of attending meetings and my QB never threw me under the bus. #justsaying

[pbmax]

TJ Lang Retweeted
John Kuhn
Verified account @kuhnj30
49m49 minutes ago

Never knew my coach to get a massage instead of attending meetings and my QB never threw me under the bus. #justsaying

There is a lot of timeshiftimg going on in the article. Almost all the Rodgers stuff from players is Super Bowl and earlier. The stuff that looks like it might be current is from personnel people who are no longer there and the complaints echo all the entitled/diva talk about his pre-draft interviews.

I also find it hard to believe that Rodgers actually holds M3 responsible for the 49ers draft decision. I am certain he remembers it and the comments, but I doubt its an active source of frustration.

[pbmax]

McCarthy denies massage story: https://twitter.com/sportsrapport/st...45009215164418

Tyler Dunne @TyDunne
And fwiw, here is one player's response to McCarthy's response on this: "It was talked about widely. Bizarre that he would deny that when it was widely known."

Widely known is very close to "we all believed it".

[mraynrand]

McCarthy denies massage story: https://twitter.com/sportsrapport/st...45009215164418

Tyler Dunne @TyDunne
And fwiw, here is one player's response to McCarthy's response on this: "It was talked about widely. Bizarre that he would deny that when it was widely known."

Widely known is very close to "we all believed it".

I was gonna photoshop Joe Biden in there behind Stubby rubbing his shoulders...

[wist43]

And Skylar said that Brittney liked Tanner... meanwhile Brice told Ashley that Coach Dooley fondled his whatsit, and that he liked it!! Well of course, Ashley told Brice that if he liked it so much, he could just plan on spending spring break with coach Dooley then!!!

Tune in next week to see what color skirts the PackerRats gossip club will be wearing!!

[mraynrand]

And Skylar said that Brittney liked Tanner... meanwhile Brice told Ashley that Coach Dooley fondled his whatsit, and that he liked it!! Well of course, Ashley told Brice that if he liked it so much, he could just plan on spending spring break with coach Dooley then!!!

Tune in next week to see what color skirts the PackerRats gossip club will be wearing!!

someone needs a masseuse

[wist43]

someone needs a masseuse

We're a couple weeks out from one of the most important drafts for this franchise in recent memory, the roster is full of developing and/or transitional types of players, and we have a new coaching staff - and all this mob wants to talk about is gossipy shit from a bygone era??

I'm having to go to other sites just to talk about actual Packer issues and players b/c no one here wants to talk football.

Buncha God damned women!! Get your heads out of your pussies

[Bretsky]

Ty Dunne is the best football writer around. We were lucky to have him.

Yes, Aaron Rodgers is the problem.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...d-in-green-bay

This Deserved it's own thread

[call_me_ishmael]

Another longtime teammate agrees: "That was a large cancer in the locker room. It wasn't a secret."

Anonymous teammates in reference to Rodgers still being butthurt about McCarthy's squad drafting Alex Smith. Dude, move on with your life. How is this a thing?

One former teammate says he thinks Rodgers should have won a minimum of six Super Bowl rings under McCarthy and that the 2011 team should be remembered like the '72 Dolphins.

Who's the teammate? Also, this is insane.

Rodgers may not be a Tom Brady-like locker room presence, but to one former offensive teammate, he's still "by far the best quarterback, skills-wise, in the history of the NFL." And it was on McCarthy to manage that, provide leadership and make his quarterback's life as stress-free as possible. Do everything in his power to let that talent shine.

"His No. 1 job, and Mike always missed this point, is to manage Aaron," the former teammate says. "That's your driver. That's your engine. Aaron's your engine for the whole team. Whether you want to or don't want to, you have to make sure that guy's happy. At the end of the day—and it doesn't sound like a fun job—if he's happy, you're winning.

"Your job isn't to go out there and throw and catch passes. Your job is to manage people."

"He tried to bill himself as this quarterback master," the player says. "It was like, 'Buddy, I just want to let you know, Joe Montana did a lot more before he was in Kansas City.'"

Who's the teammate? Sounds to me like one of the recently retired guards.

McCarthy felt he was the one who created this monster of an offense. A personnel man adds: "That was McCarthy's big mistake. He wanted to be The Guy. He wanted to be The Reason. And he wasn't that good."

Elliot Wolf?

Gone was defensive tackle B.J. Raji (2009-2015), who one player claims held everyone accountable on defense. Thompson lowballed Raji, choosing instead to pay big money to fire-breathing defensive tackle Mike Daniels. While Daniels has been hell-bent on trashing Green Bay's "soft" label, one teammate says guys are turned off by his "hypocritical leadership."

My guess is the teammate is Haha.

It didn't help that McCarthy also was rotating his assistants between positions annually. He wanted them to gain more experience, but as Grant points out, this didn't necessarily help the players. Many times, they felt as though they knew more about their position than their own coach.

Sort of feel like our young and inexperienced staff is bound to be like this.

"What guys did on defense did not matter," he says. "This is an offensive-minded team, and our quarterback is expected to bail us out. As defenders, we used to always talk about it. It's like, 'We whupped their ass today in camp. Are they going to finally run to us? Respect us?'"

"That's when the real coaching, the real identity, the real character came out of everybody," he says. "I saw that guys give up when we don't have a star quarterback. I see guys aren't going to give it all when their backs are against the wall."

"That Seahawks game defined our team right there," he says. "We didn't have any finishers."

Who could this be other than Haha? At first I thought Randall but then it calls back to 2014-2015 pre-Randall so it's gotta be Haha.

In one red-zone drill in practice, St. Brown didn't pick up on a signal, and Rodgers lost it. No, he wasn't exactly giving these rookies a chance to grow, either. A source close to one of the team's skill-position starters says Rodgers was the one "sinking the ship" with zero interest in developing Valdes-Scantling, St. Brown or Moore.

Close to a skill position starter? Sounds to me like a skill position starter 'cause I doubt Ty Dunne is calling a close friend or spouse of a starter. Who could it be? I think Cobb and Rodgers genuinely get along so I am sort of at a loss here. Aaron Jones? Davante?

He ran the routes as they were called from the sideline, and his targets declined. Rodgers would look his way, then pat, pat, pat the ball for something else to develop. Why? A source close to the team says Valdes-Scantling told him Rodgers just didn't like him. That he wasn't doing exactly what Rodgers asked him to do, so the quarterback started to freeze him out.

Philbin??

But even in the best of times—when confetti should've still been stuck to their clothing—one person who was then close to Rodgers remembers he would regularly call to vent that McCarthy didn't have a clue what he was doing. He'd tell him that McCarthy frequently called the wrong play. That he used the wrong personnel. That they were running plays that worked one out of 50 times in practice. That McCarthy was a buffoon he was constantly bailing out.

Sounds like a brother or Munn.

"I guarantee you, he never—maybe once or twice—but mostly never, ever addressed any of those things with Mike," this person says. "Which means all it did was fester and poison it."

Sounds like a brother or Munn.

Sources say McCarthy welcomed Rodgers over to his house and once even recommended he pick up the phone to call his mother. But Rodgers wasn't a fan of McCarthy's storytelling—he preferred to stick to the X's and O's. And on the family advice, Rodgers told McCarthy in so many words to mind his own business. McCarthy demanded more of Rodgers "as a man," one ex-friend says, "and Aaron didn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to ever be told he's wrong."

Mike is a good guy. This sounds like a brother. Someone who is very close to Rodgers. Maybe Olivia Munn.

"Of course, it comes to a head, and what does he want to do?" says a source who was once close to Rodgers. "He wants to cut him out of his life, just like he cut his family out."

Brother or Munn.

Adds a personnel man who worked for the Packers at the time: "He's not going to respect you if he thinks he's smarter than you."

One ex-Packers scout puts it on both. He describes Rodgers as an arrogant quarterback quick to blame everyone but himself—one who's "not as smart as he thinks he is"—yet kindly points out that McCarthy basically quit on his team.

Elliot Wolf?

The problem for McCarthy was that as the talent drained, he failed to innovate. His scheme went stale and he didn't adapt. As one personnel man puts it, McCarthy "got full off his own juice." He believed his system—not the Packers' absurd amount of talent—was the foundation for the offensive success. But raw rookies cannot bust free one-on-one like, say, Jennings or Nelson or Jones.

Where were the route combinations? The motion? The misdirection? "It's like, 'Dude, you have to adjust! The league changes!'" the personnel man says. "You've got to be humble enough to follow it. If you can't adapt, you die. He definitely didn't adapt. You can't run 90 back-shoulders into coverage. I don't care who you are. Things got so stale."

Elliot Wolf?

"If you're not a part of meetings, and then you're trying to be pissed about execution, nobody's going to really respect you," says one former front-office member from the McCarthy-Rodgers era. "They're going to look at you like, 'Where have you been all week?' It sounded like he was really just chilling."

Wolf?

When Thompson hired McCarthy, he called him "Pittsburgh macho." And yet the coach rarely matched his no-bull rhetoric in press conferences with no-bull action. One personnel man calls him "a fake tough guy."

Wolf?

Another longtime member of the Packers front office agrees, claiming any frustration Rodgers felt with Janis, with anyone, is likely because that player doesn't work how Rodgers works. Think of Jordan, Kobe, any legend. They're all demanding to the point of teammates despising them. Ask Magic Johnson's teammates what they thought of him, the source says. "They'd say, 'This dude was a jerk!'"

Gooter.

The leadership exodus pushed Rodgers further and further into an ill-fitting role. He never had to worry about speaking up back in 2010 or 2011. He played football. That's what he prefers. Multiple sources say Rodgers misses those days, with one adding he's become worn down and bitter about everyone's expectations of the type of leader he should be. In other words, as a former Packers scout puts it, Rodgers "is Brett Favre 2.0. He used to say, 'Oh, I'll never be like that guy.' And he literally is."

Wolf?

How Thompson failed to grasp this dynamic baffles people in the organization, although they also believe someone above Thompson should've stepped in because the GM's health was deteriorating. One personnel man recalls Thompson moving "really slow," with slurred speech, falling asleep during film sessions. "I'm like, 'This is the GM?'" Thompson was dealing with obvious physical issues, and Mark Murphy, the team president since 2007, didn't step in.

Sounds like Wolf.

Many agree McCarthy could have saved himself if he had swallowed his pride and hired a bright offensive mind to challenge Rodgers. One beam of hope emerged in Alex Van Pelt, who coached running backs in 2012 and 2013 before moving over to quarterbacks in 2014. However, team sources say McCarthy felt threatened by Van Pelt, who became close to Rodgers. The Packers opted not to retain Van Pelt when his contract expired after the 2017 season, which didn't sit well with Rodgers.

Sounds like Wolf as well.

[call_me_ishmael]

Either way, he freelanced more than ever. One source with close ties to the team estimates Rodgers changed about a third of the plays McCarthy called. "An alarming amount. That is embarrassing. And they don't work!'" Realizing early on that his days in Green Bay were numbered, McCarthy would not rip Rodgers publicly. Not even as fans lambasted him for failing to feed dangerous running back Aaron Jones—while Rodgers simultaneously audibled out of runs.

Philbin? Winston Moss?

A source close to the team says St. Brown became frustrated because, as much as he wanted to follow McCarthy’s play design, he also heard rumors of Rodgers freezing out teammates if they didn't do exactly what he demanded. So he listened to Rodgers. On one play in New England, Rodgers told St. Brown to run a post route when the play called for a flag. St. Brown ran the post, and pressure forced Rodgers to throw the ball away toward the flag—leading his position coach to grill him on what he was thinking.

St. Brown told him he was "improvising" so he didn't upset Rodgers.

Knowing what was up, McCarthy told him to stick with the routes called.

"That's when it went off the rails," the source close to the team says. "This shit was terrible. He fucked McCarthy over. Aaron undermined him."

Sounds like Moss, maybe Philbin.

Right before the Packers announced LaFleur as their new head coach, the source close to the team says Murphy called Rodgers to tell him who they were going with. He didn't ask for permission—he told him who the choice was. There was a brief pause on the other end of the phone before Rodgers eventually spoke. Murphy made it clear that Rodgers would need to accept coaching. "Don't be the problem," he told him. "Don't be the problem."

The single most damning quote in the whole thing. Wow. Who could the source possibly be to know the content of a presumably private-ish phone call??

The Packers' brass did not feel the need to get Rodgers' approval on whomever it hired. Murphy wanted a young coach who'd challenge the entire team, not just the quarterback.

Probably same source as above.

After dismissing anything Jennings and Finley say—"Fuck those guys"—one former coach says Rodgers has matured and dismisses the idea that he'd blow off anyone who can't match his IQ. He says Rodgers simply wants a coach "who isn't going to bullshit him" and expects Getsy, who was in Green Bay from 2014 to 2017 and spent last year at Mississippi State, to be precisely that.

"You give a guy a green light to do whatever he wants and then criticize him for it. Which one do you want?" the coach says. "Do you want him to be creative, or do you want him to be exactly what you tell him?"

Sounds like Alex Van Pelt to me.

[Rutnstrut]

This proves what some of us have been seeing from the outside for years. Rogers is a stat whore diva, TT is an overrated idiot, and stubby was mediocre at best. Put the Kool-Aid down and you too will see this clearly.

[mraynrand]

This proves what some of us have been seeing from the outside for years. Rogers is a stat whore diva, TT is an overrated idiot, and stubby was mediocre at best. Put the Kool-Aid down and you too will see this clearly.

and yet they won a lot of games. I don't agree with your estimate of TT. I would say he was ill before I'd call him an idiot. Maybe he even has CTE, eh?

[oldbutnotdeadyet]

So...I'm old, maybe even senile, but I really give zero fucks. As a fan, I care most about entertainment, whether they win super bowl or not. So no matter who screwed who, or when, I want to watch a game and be entertained. Many good memories of the Favre years, and Rodgers years, but lately...crickets. So, I really don't care what happened in the past, I just eagerly wait for the Packers to get their head out of their ass and start dominating again. Isn't that what today's NFL is about??