It doesn't seem that Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and head coach Matt LaFleur are on the same page right now.
After Sunday's 27-10 drubbing at the hands of the New York Jets, Rodgers was asked what the flailing Packers offense needs to get better. His answer? Simplify everything.
Aaron Rodgers asked what this offense needs: “Simpler. Simpler. Simplify some things.”
What needs to be simpler?
“All of it.”
— Ryan Wood (@ByRyanWood) October 16, 2022
Asked Aaron Rodgers about #Packers protection issues: “A lot of it is simple mistakes. If we’re making simple mistakes on complex plays, to me we need to simplify some things.”
He would not stump for Yosh Nijman at RT.
“That’s not a question for me,” Rodgers said.
— Ryan Wood (@ByRyanWood) October 16, 2022
LaFleur didn't appear to agree when he was asked about Rodgers wanting to simplify the offense on Monday.
"I don't know what that means. We talked about it. Any time there's a lack of execution… to me, it's about digging at the details of what we're doing. Because I think you could see that, and it falls on everybody. Certainly, again it always starts with us as coaches, trying to do a better job of getting guys to understand all the little intricacies, because I think that's really what separates a lot of plays in this league. It really doesn't matter what we do schematically. If we don't block better, it's hard to do anything. And I think that was really the No. 1 issue yesterday."
LaFleur and Rodgers aren't that far apart, honestly. The simple mistakes Rodgers is talking about are execution mistakes. The difference is that LaFleur wants to "dig" into those mistakes and fix them. Rodgers appears to want to reduce the degree of difficulty so no mistakes are made. Those are definitely two different ways of fixing this problem. One assumes that the players on the team have the ability to fix their mistakes, and the other assumes they don't have the ability to do that.
We have no idea if Rodgers was really saying that the Packers offense is not talented enough to execute LaFleur's offense, but we do know this: Rodgers believes he's played a relatively small role in the consistent crumbling of the offense. He said on Sunday that he needed to raise his level just a "tick" for Green Bay to win the last few games.
Aaron Rodgers: "I've got to raise my game probably a tick in order for us to come out on the winning side in some of these games."
The NFL has been put on alert. We'll see if what usually happens, happens.
— Ryan Wood (@ByRyanWood) October 16, 2022
We'll have to wait until next week — the Packers, 3-3, face the 2-4 Commanders — to see if Rodgers can turn it on like he used to. If he can, Green Bay should start winning immediately, since Rodgers apparently thinks that little "tick" is what the Packers need to find success.
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