Packers All-Time Top 5 QBs: Legends and Legacies
They are some of the greatest quarterbacks in pro football history. Why are we so damn sick of them?
One of the joys of writing this series has been discussing quarterbacks who aren’t often discussed: not the legends, but guys like Dan Pastorini, Bill Kenney or Jim Harbaugh in his Bears days. This Packers list begins with three of the most talked-about quarterbacks in NFL history. I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said, and in some cases is still being said, sometimes by me. But let’s start this journey and find out where it leads us.
1. Aaron Rodgers
Analytics make the Rodgers-over-Brett Favre decision easy. Here are the Top 10 quarterback seasons in Packers history since 1979, per DYAR:
Aaron Rodgers, 2011
Aaron Rodgers, 2014
Aaron Rodgers, 2020
Brett Favre, 1995
Aaron Rodgers, 2012
Aaron Rodgers, 2021
Aaron Rodgers, 2010
Aaron Rodgers, 2016
Aaron Rodgers, 2009
Brett Favre, 2004
Stop the fight! Stop the fight!
Rodgers led the NFL in passing DVOA in 2011, 2014, 2020 and 2021. He finished second in passing DYAR all four years: to Drew Brees in 2011, Ben Roethlisberger in 2014, Patrick Mahomes in 2020 and Tom Brady in 2021.
Rodgers was the NFL’s best quarterback from 2011 through roughly 2016. Brady was better before that and after that, when he ascended into Ageless Warrior Mage at the same time Rodgers completed his transformation into an insufferable prick.
Nobody holds a grudge in any sport like Rodgers. When it comes to Rodgers, grudges do not merrily float away. They stick. They grow. They refuel. – Ty Dunne, Bleacher Report, April, 2019.
It’s hard to remember that Rodgers was considered mildly eccentric, at most, for much of his peak. We have forgotten the guy who attended an open-mic night and played guitar with his long snapper in 2011. When Rodgers began enduring periodic slumps in the late-2010s, radio hosts would ask me “What’s wrong with Aaron Rodgers?” using that exact phrasing, which some ESPN programmers had coined for maximum impact. My answer was never “He’s a tinfoil hat wingnut and seething cauldron of petty spite,” because that was not the persona he projected at the time.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has a reputation as someone who always wishes to speak to the manager.
To the public he is the beer snob who turns up his nose at all 500 brewpub taps, the faultfinding co-worker whose arrival prompts everyone to politely excuse themselves from the break room with their lunches half-eaten. No pass route is ever run precisely enough for Rodgers, no game plan creative enough for his talents, and dissatisfaction radiates from him with the passive-aggressive fury of a million failed marriages. — Mike Tanier, New York Times, September 30, 2020.
The Internet-radicalized Rodgers of 2018-present is a mid-21st century version of the hard-living Ken Stabler of the late-1970s. He was still an outstanding quarterback from the moment the Packers traded him, but the off-the-field stuff was just enough of a drag on his team to be a background contributor to playoff heartbreaks. Rodgers was better than Stabler for a longer period of time, because modern medicine/conditioning has its advantages, and a Facebook addiction isn’t as hazardous to day-to-day health as constant binge drinking. But both players became obstinate and contemptuous of their organizations late in their peaks.
Decades later, Stabler just looks like a man of his wild-and-crazy times. Maybe 40 years from now folks will look back at Rodgers and say, Heh, lots of folks in those days ingested so much social media that it made them angry and stupid, but now we have much healthier habits. For society’s sake, I sure hope so.
2. Brett Favre
Favre was the first quarterback casual fans ever got truly sick of.