Aaron Rodgers and the Relentless Pursuit of Mojo

It’s not easy being a nerd.

Nerddom, you see, is not a job that you apply for, or a hobby that you pursue. It is a calling, a set of personality traits that are thrust onto you, and which you own for life, whether you want them or not.

A nerd is obsessed with gathering data and facts in a relentless quest for the truth, the actual, provable truth, and we must see this truth with our own eyes and no one else’s. The truth is the only goal, and we need to know it, no matter how inconvenient or painful it may be.

Which brings me to Aaron Rodgers.

I genuinely like the guy. He’s intelligent and articulate. I laugh, actually laugh at his Discount Double-check commercials. I admire his unflappable demeanor on the field. I also admire his productivity as a quarterback—by any measure, he’s one of the best who’s ever played—but I’ve delved deeply into the numbers, and those numbers tell a story that isn’t pretty. The bitter truth is that, when it’s time to take over a game and put your team in a position to win, Aaron Rodgers is not the guy you want under center.

In the 2009 Wild Card game between Green Bay and Arizona, Rodgers had one of the most magnificent playoff performances I’ve ever seen from a quarterback—for exactly 60 minutes.

Problem is, the game went to overtime.

Rodgers was down by 17 before his offense scored a point, and then fell behind even further. The score was 31-10 at the beginning of the 2^nd half, and all seemed lost. But Rodgers and his offense scored on seven straight drives, including 5 straight touchdowns, the final one coming on an 11-yard TD pass with less than 2:00 remaining, which tied the game at 45. Yes, 45-45.

I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe that if you keep yourself in the game, you’ll get your chances to win—and that’s exactly what happened that day.

Arizona kicker Neil Rackers missed a 34-yard chip shot with 9 seconds left, and then the Packers won the toss, giving Rodgers the ball at his own 20 with the game in his hands. This was 2009, remember, back when we had true sudden death overtime, not this field-goal-and-we-keep-playing stuff, so Rodgers was 3 points away from moving on. Three points, against the exhausted, clueless Arizona defense, who had kept Rodgers out of the end zone exactly once in the previous 7 drives—and by the way, that drive stalled at the 2-yard line and ended in a field goal—and this time, any score would have won the game.

After that, the sequence went:
-Incompletion
-14-yard pass play nullified by offensive holding
-Another 14-yard pass play on 2^nd and 20
-Strip sack returned for a 17-yard TD

One might be tempted to give Rodgers a pass on this. Obviously, he didn’t tell his lineman to commit offensive holding, and he did throw two 14-yard passes in a row, though one of them was called back on a penalty. A punt wouldn’t necessarily have been the end of the world; the only thing he couldn’t do is turn it over. And guess what he did?

Whenever I bring this up, Rodgers supporters (and there are a lot of them) typically respond with, “It was just one game/one drive/one play”, and if the article ended here, they might have a point. But it doesn’t, so they don’t.

The Curious Case of Aaron Rodgers’ GAP

I’ll be rolling out my new stat, Go-ahead Percentage (GAP) in a future article. For now, I’ll simply tell you that it’s a clutchness metric that measures the performance of quarterbacks in the 4^th quarter and OT, when they have the ball with a chance to take the lead. It’s calculated like a batting average:

# of times QB successfully took the lead / Total number of go-ahead opportunities

In the regular season, Rodgers is lights out when he’s got a chance to take the lead. His GAP is .406 (26/64), and he’s one of only nine QBs over .400 (with a minimum of 50 opportunities). In the playoffs, he’s even better--.429 (3/7). So what’s the problem?

First of all, seven QBs have a playoff GAP of over .500. In fact, Kurt Warner is #1 all time with a .714 (5/7), and Tom Brady’s not far behind with .692 (18/26).

By the way, yes, you read right, Brady has led 18 go-ahead drives in the 4^th quarter and OT in the playoffs. FACT: No other QB has more than nine.

In Rodgers’ case, I noticed something strange. In five of those seven playoff opportunities, he’s been down by either 3 or 7 points, and in all five cases—every single one—he’s tied the game up (3 TDs and 2 FGs). When he’s needed a field goal to tie, he’s gotten one, and when he’s needed a TD to tie, he’s done that, too, no matter what it took—even when it took a Hail Mary, as it did in the 2015 divisional round vs. Arizona.

But when it’s time to take the lead, the mojo seems to escape him. While his overall number of .429 is good, we see on closer inspection that two of the three successful drives were field goals in the same game, the 2016 divisional round at Dallas. His only go-ahead TD in the postseason was also vs. Dallas in a divisional playoff, this time in 2014.

In other words, Rodgers has only led three go-ahead drives in seven opportunities in the 4^th quarter and OT in the playoffs, all three of them against the Cowboys, and just one of the three scores was a touchdown. And yet, strangely, he’s had three 4^th quarter game-tying TDs in as many chances. You can scream “Sample size!” all you want, but to me, he’s a tie-er, not a winner:

Aaron Rodgers - Potential Game-tying Drives

-Playoffs-

Aaron Rodgers - Potential Go-ahead Drives

-Playoffs-

“What’s the big deal?” you ask. “He tied the game in four out of the seven drives! His defense gave up game-winning scores in most of those games, and in two of them, he didn’t even get a chance to possess the ball in overtime! He was screwed by his defense! He was screwed by the OT coin flip!”

Ah yes, screwed-by-the-defense and screwed-by-the-coin-flip, the “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be” of Aaron Rodgers excuses.

Rodgers is supposed to be an otherworldly talent, a machine who can’t be stopped. Yet he lost 23-20 to San Francisco, 26-20 to Arizona, and 28-22 to Seattle. If you can’t muster more than 22 points in three different games, don’t look at the defense—look at yourself.

And tell me you don’t wonder what would have happened in that 2014 NFCCG vs. Seattle, when Rodgers ended up with a field goal instead of a touchdown, settling for a tie instead of a win, and never seeing the ball again. Rodgers fans love to blame the coin flip, which is another way of saying that Rodgers totally would have beaten Seattle if he had another chance to possess the ball. But what about the chance he had, at the end of regulation?! Rodgers had a 1^st-and-10 at his own 22 with 1:19 left and all 3 timeouts, yet only used one of them in the entire drive as precious seconds ticked away.

The 51-45 instant classic vs. Arizona that I mentioned earlier was Rodgers’ first playoff game. Call it “beginner’s luck”, or “the audacity of youth” or whatever you like, but Rodgers hasn’t had a game close to it since.

In fact, when we look at Rodgers’ other six playoff losses, we see a clear pattern, and the tying-instead-of-winning is only the beginning. Specifically, Rodgers led his offense to exactly one TD in the 4^th quarter of these six games when down by two scores or less. One touchdown, in six 4^th quarter drives, each with the game hanging in the balance and the entire season on the line. 

Aaron Rodgers – 4^th Qtr Drives When Trailing By Two Scores or Less

-Playoffs-

I’ll let him off the hook for the fumble against the Giants in 2012, since a running back, Ryan Grant, fumbled the ball, and we can’t rightly hold Rodgers responsible for that. Which leaves him with one touchdown in five drives.

Again, now, with the “sample size” argument. “Five drives isn’t enough to judge a man’s value as a QB,” you say.

I say five drives is more than enough. In fact, I say two drives is enough.

How much would everyone be talking about Joe Montana without “The Catch” in the NFC Championship Game vs. Dallas in 1982, and without the game-winning TD at the end of Super Bowl XXIII? Without those two drives, Montana has two Super Bowl wins, and Terry Bradshaw (4 rings) and Troy Aikman (3 rings) would have been duking it out for GOAT status before Brady came along. Those Montana drives altered NFL history—and there were only two of them.

Look at the chart again. Forget the scarcity of touchdowns. Rodgers only made it into the red zone once in those five drives, and his lone TD was on a Hail Mary, which, while impressive, clearly wasn’t Plan A—and it was only necessary in the first place because he had gone 45 yards in a little under two minutes, somehow managing to burn 1:14 off the clock in two plays, even though they were supposedly in a hurry-up offense. FACT: Kneeling down and intentionally running the play clock to 0 twice takes about 1:30 off the clock.

Oh, and lest we forget, Rodgers got the ball not once, but twice, deep in Seattle territory in the first quarter of that game—once at the 23 and once at the 19—and managed only two field goals. Change either of those two drives, or the one at the end of regulation, to a TD, and Green Bay wins, and overtime isn’t in the discussion.

But tell me more about coin flips.

Still on the Rodgers train? Let’s turn this around for a moment. What was that game for Rodgers, that time that he put the team on his back and helped win a game they had no business being in? Montana came back from 28 points down to win against New Orleans. Peyton erased a 21-point deficit in four minutes vs. Tampa Bay on a Monday night, and came back from a 21-3 deficit to win in the playoffs vs. New England. Brady came back from 10 down to win Super Bowl 49, then came back from 25 down to win Super Bowl 51. What’s Rodgers’ signature game?

The 2009 Wild Card vs. Arizona? You mean a game he lost is the one he’s most famous for? A game where he was strip-sacked in OT, giving up the losing TD? How about a game he won?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

It’s a well-known canard that Rodgers is something like 1-40 in the regular season when trailing by more than 1 point in the 4^th quarter against teams that finished the season with a winning record. With that in mind, it’s probably no surprise that Rodgers is also 0-7 in the playoffs after trailing by more than one point in the 4^th quarter.

Need I even say it: Aaron Rodgers is one of the most accurate, productive passers you’ll ever see. But when it comes to late-game clutch performances, his résumé is nearly empty. If you’re looking for the GOAT, look elsewhere.