This will surely rankle Shawn — and you are going to hear much more about it in the podcast later today. We all know Aaron Rodgers doesn’t play in the preseason.
Or at least not any meaningful amount of time. He threw just nine passes and played in one game in 2016. We expect nothing different this year.
We know the reason for this, although no one with the Green Bay Packers will actually come out and say it. You can’t have Aaron Rodgers getting injured in a meaningless game.
Still, there’s something to be said for playing against an actual opponent. Yes, even in a preseason game, where the defensive looks are vanilla.
Last week, Rodgers curtly explained that he doesn’t think his lack of preseason work has anything to do with regular season performance. Of course, the evidence would suggest otherwise.
Rodgers and his nine preseason snaps started off the 2016 regular season in the same subpar fashion he finished 2015. He didn’t start to light it up until around midseason. If memory serves, the Washington game, which the Packers lost, is where Rodgers personally turned it around.
That was in week 11.
Now, we’re not going to blow this out of proportion, but the questions keep coming for Rodgers.
He explained why he values practice over preseason games on Tuesday.
“Those practice reps are very important. That, to me, is more real football,” Rodgers said on Tuesday. “If you look at the game the other night against Philly, I think they brought maybe one or two pressures. One on the last drive. And maybe one early in the game on a third-and-short. That’s not a realistic game plan. They played one-high man, a little bit of one-high zone and some two-high zone.”
And that’s a realistic point.
But as Shawn will explain, no practice is a game, regardless of whether it’s a fake game or not.
We can debate this all day, but it will ultimately come down to how Rodgers and the Packers start the regular season. Their early schedule isn’t easy, but if they rip through it and Rodgers plays well, then that will be end of discussion.