This season, QB performance has seen a modest bump to 29.3 - better, but still not very good. Since 2009, the league average QBR 1 on plays with QB pressure is just 18.5, according to ESPN Stats & Information - just barely better than the worst quarterbacking season of the century, Jimmy Clausen’s catastrophe in 2010, which came in at 14.5 QBR.
But these days there’s a group of quarterbacks, Rodgers included, who are defying that conventional wisdom. Get to the quarterback, the thinking goes, and you’re in good shape, failing a stroke of luck or the spectacular. It worked on Tom Brady and the 18-0 Patriots in 2008, and God knows it worked on Cam Newton and the Panthers in Super Bowl 50. One of the bedrock principles of defense in the NFL is that pressuring the quarterback works. But Aaron Rodgers slipping the pocket, rolling left, pausing, waiting for his receivers to come back across the field, and hitting Jared Cook for a 36-yard catch that was inbounds by a toenail and set up the game-winning field goal? Now that’s a little bit of luck and a whole lot of skill.Īaron Rodgers is unusually good when pressure comes his way.
AARON RODGERS STATS PLAYOFFS FREE
Aaron Rodgers dropping deep in the pocket on a free play and rifling a 34-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Richard Rodgers, under-throwing him but threading it precisely between linebacker Sean Lee’s outstretched arm and his earhole against the Cowboys last weekend? That takes some baseline NFL skills, but mostly it’s a bad pass getting a lucky break. A certain number of things that happen during a football game come down to skill, and a certain number to luck, and it’s important to be able to tell one from the other.
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