Ask anyone who plays fantasy football, myself included, who has been the biggest disappointment of the 2012 season and many will point you in the direction of Aaron Rodgers. The performance of the Green Bay quarterback hasn’t been terrible, but it hasn’t been stellar either and that’s what many (including myself) who drafted Aaron Rodgers in the first round were expecting. Perhaps I’m just a relatively inexperienced NFL fan, but how one player can go from eye-popping Sportscenter leading stat lines to the fairly pedestrian totals Rodgers has put up dumbfounds me.
At bare minimum, it begs the question about which year is the fluke. Is 2012 the norm? Is 2011 the norm and this season just a blip? One or two games below expectation and I think the argument about the flukey nature of 2012 is a decent one. We’re venturing further away from fluke and more toward consistency. A consistency that for all intents and purposes has been remarkably underwhelming. Take a look at how he has impacted the expected performance in the eyes of Las Vegas… click to read more.
Tonight, Rodgers gets the opportunity to not only break the lackluster trend, he gets to do it against a stellar defense and potentially knock off one of the two remaining undefeated teams in front of a national audience with only one game to capture their attention. Isn’t that what premier quarterbacks are made for? It’s been said that big time players make big time plays. I’d say tonight, there’s no bigger time to make those big plays by someone Packers fans laud as one of the biggest players around.
Injuries certainly haven’t been kind to the Packers and their defense has been downright dreadful, but that never seemed to stop the elite. There are countless seasons where a Colts fan could point to Peyton Manning overcoming the exact same confluence of factors to lead the Colts to another division title. Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and a whole host of other top-level talent could say the same.
What can’t be taken away from Rodgers is his Super Bowl XLV win and the subsequent MVP, but like so many other things in sports and life to a certain degree, it’s all about the “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” sentiment. For Rodgers, the chance to change that narrative and redirect the critics and fitful fantasy owners begins tonight against the 5-0 Texans on NBC.
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Over The Pylon 
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