Packers wasted Aaron Rodgers’ prime, might blow best chance at Super Bowl

The Green Bay Packers sit atop the NFC North, but a brutal loss to the Minnesota Vikings exposed the flaws created by a lack of high-end talent around Aaron Rodgers.

The Green Bay Packers have failed Aaron Rodgers.

Rodgers, in the midst of his 16th season, is running in third place in the NFL MVP race. This despite a supporting cast that pales in comparison to the bounty of weapons the Kansas City Chiefs and Seattle Seahawks continuously add around Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson, respectively.

The Chiefs signed running back Le’Veon Bell last month as a luxury pairing with rookie sensation Clyde Edwards-Helaire. This after drafting wide receiver Mecole Hardman last year, who was a critical contributor to Kansas City’s first Super Bowl win in half a century.

Tte Seahawks took a risk that paid serious dividends drafting wide receiver D.K. Metcalf to pair with Tyler Lockett and tight end Greg Olsen.

The Packers have paired Rodgers with Davante Adams and … ?

Even the Pittsburgh Steelers found tremendous value in rookie wide receiver Chase Claypool and have consistently been adding premier defensive talent through the draft, trades, and free agency to give Ben Roethlisberger the best possible chance to win a Super Bowl this season. As a result, the Steelers might be the most complete team in the NFL and are the last of the unbeatens at 7-0.

Meanwhile, in Green Bay, it’s a minor miracle, and a testament to Rodgers’ gifts that he’s completed 65.9 percent of his passes for 1,948 yards with 20 touchdowns and two interceptions this season. What, with Adams accounting for 502 of those yards and seven scores.

Instead of the Packers taking Claypool or someone such as Brandon Aiyuk, Green Bay turned the clock back and tried to play one of the organization’s greatest hits, selecting quarterback Jordan Love No. 26 overall.

In the second round, the Packers took a massive running back in Boston College’s A.J. Dillon. Dillon has sat behind Aaron Jones. Looking at the draft board, Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst passed on versatile weapon Antonio Gibson, who went four picks later to Washington.

“They blew this offseason,” a current NFL scout tells FanSided. “They haven’t helped Rodgers one bit. I think that sums them up.”

Fortunately for Rodgers and the Packers, they play in a division where the Chicago Bears have no long-term solution at quarterback and the Detroit Lions are seemingly perennial cellar-dwellers and are on the cusp of a housecleaning.

But, even as the Vikings appeared to throw up their hands on the season by trading defensive end Yannick Ngakoue to the Baltimore Ravens last week, the Vikings marched into an empty Lambeau Field on Sunday and ran the Packers out of their own building. Literally.

"“This definitely qualifies as one of those games where if you want to be a great team, you’ve got to handle business at home,” Rodgers told reporters afterward. “It’s a game we should win against a team with the trade deadline coming and questions about their coach during the week. Yeah. These are one of the games we need to win.”"

“I’m not one to second-guess,” an NFC evaluator tells FanSided. “But, I’ll say this, the job of the general manager is not only to help his team this year but set it up for future success. The Packers have had the same philosophy since Ron Wolf. They didn’t need Rodgers when they drafted him and sat him behind Favre for three years.

“That move kept Green Bay on top of the division for more than another decade. Thus, drafting of Love back in April. The wide receivers just didn’t fall to them the way they hoped.”

Sure, Rodgers has one Super Bowl ring, but the Packers have squandered the prime of the NFL’s 12th all-time leading passer and one of the premier quarterbacks of his generation.

Love may or may not develop into an elite NFL quarterback someday. But, by drafting him, the Packers just might have lowered the ceiling on Rodgers’ ability to win a second Super Bowl today, or in what appear to be the at least three more years he’s capable of playing at an elite level.

Changing of the AFC East Guard

It’s time to believe, Bills Mafia.

Head coach Sean McDermott has Buffalo playing complementary football, the Josh Allen roller coaster experience is climbing a new peak, and Sunday afternoon in Orchard Park, the Bills effectively drove the death knell through the New England Patriots’ two decade-plus reign of terror over the NFL.

Beyond the pinball speed wide receivers Stefon Diggs and John Brown present at wide receiver, running Devin Singletary is revving up just as the Lake Erie induced wind and snow begin whipping through Buffalo. Singletary rushed for 86 yards on Sunday, rookie Zack Moss added 81 and a pair of touchdowns.

The rest of the NFL is taking notice.

“They’re absolutely legit,” a league source tells FanSided. “Their defense is a little weak, but they’re still a solid team. They for sure can play spoiler for someone.”

Last season, the San Francisco 49ers’ running game and mobile quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, offered a roadmap to postseason success in the NFL. Who knows how far Allen’s legs and their promising young backs will take them this January in a conference full of heavyweights.

If they are able to play ball control and complementary football down the stretch, they’re going to be a tougher out than most people think.

“It’s definitely time to start buying into Buffalo,” a current NFL scout tells FanSided. “They’re not even playing great right now and still winning. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”

Exec’s take on the NFL trade deadline

The NFL trade deadline was relatively quiet on Tuesday, as FanSided has learned from conversations with multiple general managers and talent evaluators was due to several factors.

Because the COVID-19 testing and entry protocols make it difficult to get a player into the building within four days of a trade, teams were hesitant to trade a player or an asset in exchange for a player who might not be available until Week 10.

As for the two marquee trades that did go down; the Tennessee Titans acquiring defensive back Desmond King from the Los Angeles Chargers in exchange for a sixth-round pick, the Pittsburgh Steelers netting Jets linebacker Avery Williamson and a seventh-round pick for a fifth-round pick, perception inside the league is significantly different from how those trades are viewed from the outside.

“I actually like the Steelers’ trade much more,” a general manager tells FanSided, pointing out that King is an “undersized nickel corner who doesn’t run all that well.”

Pittsburgh vs. Tennessee was one of the marquee games of the first half, with the Steelers leaving Nashville with 27-24 win and in the driver’s seat for home-field advantage in the AFC.

That afternoon, the Steelers passed for 268 yards  and a pair of Ben Roethlisberger touchdowns while the Titans rushed for 82 yards and a Derrick Henry touchdown.

It seems both of these teams at least considered what happened in this game and the implications of a possible playoff matchup when they made their trades.

What I’ll be watching Sunday

New Orleans Saints vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Drew Brees and Tom Brady, for the second of (maybe) three times in 2020 will be must-see television.

It’s almost laughable, and certainly unfathomable, the number of people who wrote Brady off after a lackluster Week 1 loss in the SuperDome. That afternoon, his first in Bruce Arians’ system and with receivers Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, Brady was held to 239 passing yards with two touchdowns, two interceptions, and was sacked three times.

Brady has since shook himself out of Father Time’s fingertips and left him in the dust, completing 67 percent of his passes for 1,950 yards with 18 touchdowns and two interceptions. Over that span, Brady has a three-touchdown, four-touchdown, and five-touchdown performance, including wins over the Packers and Las Vegas Raiders.

The Buccaneers look like one of the two most complete and dominant teams in the NFL, but Brees’ Saints are their stiffest competition in the NFC South and their quest for the NFC’s bye.

Can the Saints complete the season sweep? Or will the Buccaneers take one more step towards becoming the first team to host a Super Bowl in their home stadium? I can’t wait to find out.

Quotable

"“Carson is our starter, and we’ve got a lot of trust and faith in him that he can get the job done. By no means was I in a position to make a decision or make a move [Sunday]. It’s just something that we’ve got to continue to coach, we’ve got to continue to get better. He understands he has to get better in that area. We also understand that our backup quarterbacks here, Jalen and Nate, have got to be prepared, whether it’s a situation like that or an injury situation where they have to go in and play. My mind wasn’t there. I wasn’t going there. I was going to give Carson every opportunity to win that game for us. He’s capable of doing that, and I wasn’t in that frame of mind.”"

– Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, via ESPN, says he’s committed to Carson Wentz, but I’m not convinced he believes it.

Or that he should be.

Wentz has regressed dramatically in his fifth season. He looked brilliant on the Eagles’ game-winning drive, but otherwise like a careless rookie en route to turning it over four times in Sunday night’s 23-9 win.

The Eagles are 3-4-1, in the driver’s seat — somehow — in the NFC East, even as Wentz leads the NFL with 12 turnovers. It’s imperative that Wentz figures out how to protect the football, trust his weapons, and quite frankly trust himself if the Eagles are going to capitalize on a rather soft second half of the schedule.

Final thought

Next week will be midpoint roundup extraordinaire here, but two things became evident this weekend: the Steelers and Buccaneers are the two most dominant and complete teams.

Pittsburgh passed their toughest test of the season on Sunday. When the Steelers went on the road to Baltimore against their bitter rivals, toppling Lamar Jackson and Co. 28-24, holding Jacksin to 208 passing yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, while Jackson rushed 16 times for 65 yards, they remained the last unbeaten standing and established themselves as the clear-cut Super Bowl favorite in the AFC.

Meanwhile, Monday night, the Buccaneers got dragged down into a dogfight with the Giants’ defense, even trailing in the fourth quarter, before Tom Brady once again proved to be Tom Terrific with his 38th fourth quarter comeback in a 25-23 win over the Giants. Sometimes it isn’t about style points, but learning as a team how to win ugly.

Both the Steelers and Buccaneers did that this week. There’s a lot of runway remaining until the Super Bowl kicks off in Tampa Bay in February, but these two teams certainly look like the teams best built to get there.

Matt Lombardo is the site expert for GMenHQ, and writes Between The Hash Marks each Wednesday for FanSided. Follow Matt on Twitter: @MattLombardoNFL.