For much of his first nine games with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Aaron Rodgers hasn’t looked like a 41-year old quarterback. He’s still has the arm strength he needs to make tough throws, and is still one of the best quarterbacks in the league from a mental standpoint.
However, the Steelers’ loss to the Los Angeles Chargers Sunday did show some cracks in the armor. According to analyst Nick Shook, it was an example of Rodgers starting looking too old for the NFL.
“It seems like every week Aaron Rodgers is pissed off at his teammates the entire game,” Shook said Sunday on the NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal podcast. “I also think it’s him grappling with the idea of Father Time. Not to say that he looks exceptionally old. But when he tries to get mobile, unless there’s ample space, ’cause he’ll still roll out and flick it, but when he’s under duress, it looks bad now. And it did not look bad earlier in his career. I think that is a repeat case of what we’ve seen far too often from this team.”
Shook isn’t the first to mention Rodgers’ body language. That’s something Chris Simms pointed out this week as well, and he took exception to the fact that Rodgers was upset with his teammates when he had a bad game himself. The Steelers players respect Rodgers well enough to not take any offense to that. But he clearly wasn’t happy with the way anything went down for the Steelers offensively last week.
Aaron Rodgers certainly had reasons to be upset. And Shook isn’t wrong that he looked like a 41-year old quarterback against the Chargers. This play, which resulted in a safety, is a good example.
Rodgers has been in the NFL long enough to pay attention to his internal clock here. But this seems to be a case where he’s just not used to his lack of mobility. He can still move, but he just looks discombobulated on this play, which winds up costing the Steelers two points. Rodgers should be getting the ball out, but he trusts his mobility more than he should here given his age. In his younger years, he’s much more likely to have escaped out of the end zone here.
That said, it’s just one bad game. And along with his performance early in the year against Seattle, it’s only his second game out of nine that could really could be considered a poor outing. He’s having a great year for his age, for the most part. And the Steelers don’t seem worried about his performance last Sunday. However, as the playoff race continues to tighten, Rodgers definitely needs to be better.
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