THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Time to Appreciate the Beauty of Rodgers' Game

 

The long grind of the 2015- 16 NFL campaign is now underway in earnest. At the quarter pole the Green Bay Packers are 4- 0 with a highlight reel offense, the best player on the planet, and a defense that is fiercely improving with every week and making a strong case for itself. These are heady times indeed and it is in these moments that history is being written.

The tendency is to simply assume greatness and with that comes the expectation of another Lombardi Trophy in the case at the end of the rainbow. Let’s hurry up and get there so we can enjoy it all off season. Never mind with the October stuff or November. Heck, forget about the playoffs – the Super Bowl is the only barometer by which a team is measured and anything else is a dress rehearsal and a moot point. Let’s anoint the Pack, grab the trophy and call it a day. After all Green Bay is the best, or at least one of the best, teams in the NFL right now with the best, or at least one of the best, quarterbacks of all time.

It is for those very reasons time should slow itself down to enjoy these moments. History

remembers Lombardi’s Packers of the ‘60’s as an indomitable intimidating and dominating franchise. As time passes and memory fades and photographs yellow those glory years are looked back upon with a certain wistfulness and nostalgia. We want to remember those years as a time when the Packers were simply unbeatable. And we want to see this year’s version join that august group.

But to simply pin the entire season on one game at the end of it all is to deny oneself of bearing witness to a moment in time that will only grow in the retelling many years down the road. Aaron Rodgers is at the apex of all his abilities and talents and we get to have a front row seat to watch it. His singular mastery of the game, his craft and position is a marvel to behold. There is not a single area in which Rodgers is deficient. His arm? Everything thought Brett Favre had a rocket launcher for an arm and he did. But with Favre those bombs he launched would alos oft times explode in the wrong spot. Favre once held the NFL honors of most TD’s tossed. And he also holds the record for the most interceptions of all time as well. But Rodgers has every bit as big an arm as Favre with one noted exception.

Aaron Rodgers hates throwing interceptions. Favre accepted the INT’s as a byproduct of being a gunslinger.

Rodgers loves throwing an interception the same way Donald Trump enjoys having Rosie O’Donnell over for coffee. Favre was reckless with his arm. Rodgers is not. Yes, Favre was a gunslinger. But Rodgers is an assassin and this season is a growing testament to that fact. Rodgers has thrown 11 TD’s in his first 4 games with 0 picks. Only Tom Brady can say the same. Rodgers leads the NFL in QB rating at 125.9. His football IQ is off the charts. He is the reigning MVP and has all the earmarks of another one or three yet to come.

And somehow we all want to bypass simply watching a man at the top of his craft for the reward at the end of it all.

The Pack is rolling now and all the elements are coming together. The offense is a well-documented

squad that scares the devil out of any team. But the defense is now becoming a force in its own right. Ever since Clay Matthews moved inside the Pack‘s defense has done nothing but improve. As Matthews becomes more familiar and astute within the context of being an inside linebacker he becomes more terrifying to quarterbacks every week. No longer limited to the outside, his stock in trade, Matthews has become so adept at anticipating the snap count he is oft times in the backfield before the running back has the ball.

Matthews’ move inside was borne of necessity last season. The Pack’s inside backers were underwhelming and only Sam Barrington distinguished himself at the position. While Matthews prefers the role of the outside pass rusher the Packers were becoming loaded with talent outside. Julius Peppers made Ted Thompson look like a genius when he signed as a free agent. Mike Neal finally began paying huge dividends. Now Nick Perry is playing the best he has since he was taken #1 by the Pack 3 years ago and newcomer Jayrone Elliott is forcing Mike McCarthy and Dom Capers to figure ways to keep Elliott on the field. Elliott has been nothing short of spectacular and while his body of work is small – 2 ½ games actually – he already has posted a forced fumble, an interception and has had 2 sacks. Some players go an entire season without that credibility so if there is a problem it is the type of problem Green Bay loves to have.

Vince Lombardi’s Packers were a defense-dominated offensively efficient group that most decidedly did not win every game. But one comment keeps popping up from the veterans left from that era. Many were fond of saying and kept saying it after the Pack lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the ’60 Championship “We didn’t lose – we just ran out of time.” History and memory collide as memory fades and history becomes nostalgia. There were some 60,000 hearty souls that braved the sub-arctic conditions to attend the famous Ice Bowl in ’65, but there are roughly another million or more that will have claimed to be there. In memory it wasn’t that cold and the Packers dominated. Such is the stuff of legends and folk lore.

Before it is too late it is time to simply step back and appreciate Aaron Rodgers and the artistic

beauty of a team that now weekly composes as an artistic with broad strokes punctuated by combining soft, finer strokes to create a masterpiece. We get to watch Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel from a front row pew. We are listening to Mozart compose “Orpheus”. We can see Rodin’s hammer and chisel every day take a worthless piece of granite and turn into something that will not only look stunning upon completion but will stand the test of time.

That is exactly what Aaron Charles Rodgers is doing right now. Clay Matthews and Eddie Lacy and Mike McCarthy all have a role in the master’s tour de force but with Rodgers every week he unveils another facet, another element, another level to his game, a game he and he alone plays. What Rodgers does not just with a football but within the confines of a game is a poetic, altruistic thing of beauty. He does what every other quarterback does; only he does it that much better. The “it” is any part of the game a quarterback must have. Vision, courage, accuracy, running, managing the clock, putting the ball where only his receivers can get it, processing multiple bits of information as 300 lb. behemoths swirl around him and in the eye of that hurricane, at the center of the demands on his time he remains nonplussed and unfazed.

Rodgers now has the credentials and hardware to ensure he will be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Should Rodgers produce another Super Bowl title or two or five that would instantly qualify him to be in the discussion of the greatest quarterback of all time. He has the Super Bowl MVP Favre lacks. He lacks the Super Bowl titles of Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman and Terry Bradshaw. With Rodgers all things seem possible. Now is not the time to ponder Rodgers place in history.

Rodgers is making history right now and we cannot get so consumed in the outcome we neglect to appreciate a genuine artistic genius simply do what he does. To be so consumed with the Super Bowl and nothing else would be to deny oneself of some incredible moments in NFL history. How about the ‘48’ play against Chicago… 4^th and 8, 46 seconds left on the Bears 48 and Chicago holding a lead? Rodgers throw to Randall Cobb was history, and we all saw it. How his ‘Sherman Takes Atlanta’ game in the playoffs leading up to the Super Bowl in ’10? Or the performance he delivered in a crushing defeat the year before against Arizona in the playoffs? How many times will Rodgers prove his detractors wrong before we just sit back and absorb his game? Or coming back on one leg to run Detroit out of the playoffs?

The Super Bowl is a mere blip on the horizon right now, a dot of light barely breaking the surface.

There is much football to be played. This campaign has all the indicators of something really special, something to be savored. The incoming St. Louis Rams with their ferocious front 4 of Aaron Donald, Robert Quinn, Chris Long and Michael Brockers are imposing and are as good a group as there is in the game today. They are charged with handling and containing Rodgers this week. And they are supported by an inconsistent offense that has been struggling to find receivers for Nick Foles. Rookie RB Todd Gurley looks like a star in the making but a certain Mr. Rodgers will have a thing or two to say about the outcome. The defense will continue to grow.

And we bear witness every week expecting a deep playoff run towards the Super Bowl while many teams are struggling to just win one (Philadelphia, Detroit, San Diego, Buffalo) and still even more trying to find one QB to lead them to the promised land.

These are the good old days. Many years from now we’ll be able to say with conviction we got to watch 2 of the greatest QB’s in the history of the NFL and for 30 years the Packers ruled the land to go along with Bart Starr and the ‘60’s Packers.

The Super Bowl can wait. Time to just sit back and enjoy the show.

 

 

 

  GREEN BAY 27 

 

 

 

 

  St. Louis  13