Give the Packers credit: if this is Aaron Rodgers’ final year in Green Bay, the team’s season-opening loss is true to character with “The Last Dance” Chicago Bulls in one way – they both lost.
Besides that, there isn’t much else that’s the same. Michael Jordan scored 30 while the Packers offense commandeered by Rodgers divided that number by 10.
Rodgers’ final numbers: 15 of 28 passing for 133 yards and two picks. And the story behind the numbers isn’t any better.
The offense barely touched the ball in the first half, and when they did, they looked sluggish, netting three points in three possessions. The wheels fell off in the second half when Rodgers threw a Favre-ian (not of the good variety) interception on a pass intended for Davante Adams. The misstep deep in Saints territory was bailed out by the defense, but the Packers came right back with another turnover, this time an interception on a pass intended for Marquez Valdes-Scantling. The defense imploded thereafter.
In the postgame press conference, Rodgers deviated from using Matt LaFleur’s “embarrassing” descriptor, suggesting it’s more of an early-season hiccup.
“It’s just one game,” Rodgers told reporters after the game. “We played bad. I played bad. Offensively we didn’t execute very well.”
Rodgers compared the performance to the 2019 matchup against the Chargers, a game where a seemingly hapless Chargers team dominated a first-place Packers team who came out flat and never recovered.
The comparison seems apt, to be honest, but there’s an elephant in the room. The impetus behind Rodgers’ offseason drama was because he felt like he was being mismanaged given his MVP season. Sure, he talked a lot about people and communication, but the principal conflict seems to be Rodgers’ feeling disrespected despite his recent on-field success. As he said, he didn’t want to be a “lame duck quarterback.”
So he went to Hawaii, took subtextual potshots at the team, and communicated ambiguously through social media. One way or another, for all of the pre-season reports about how great the chemistry of this team was, how ready they were, and how “all-in” Rodgers and the offense looked, they played the exact opposite of that.
The hope is that this game is an ugly, ugly molehill that feels monumental without the context of the full-season mountain. But there’s always a chance this game is the start of a nagging defect that eventually lands the Packers short of yet another Super Bowl appearance. It is Super Bowl or bust, after all. Certainly, Rodgers won’t want the enduring image of his version of the last dance to be him and Davante Adams, each donning dour complexions, sitting together on the bench of a fourth-quarter blowout with Jordan Love taking cleanup snaps.
Perhaps PackersWire’s own Zach Kruse said it best when he wrote, “one measuring stick of a great team is the response to adversity. The Packers did not respond well to in-game adversity on Sunday. But LaFleur’s team has a chance to get back to work, re-focus, and rebound in eight days when the Detroit Lions come to Lambeau Field for the primetime home opener.”
Indeed. Rodgers has done it plenty of times before. He can do it again. But the pressure and spotlight will only intensify.