Football is a young man’s game, and when father time finally comes for you, he is quite prompt. The Packers do have some fairly young talent in Davante Adams, most of the offensive line, Kenny Clark, and Blake Martinez, but a lot of the most important Packer players are getting up there, including Aaron Rodgers. While the Rodgers’ injury that derailed 2017 may seem like an unlikely outlier, in truth age has bitten the Packers far too often lately. In 2015 the Packers had the 6th best pass defense in football according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA, which measures efficiency on a play-by-play basis. Dom Capers takes a lot of criticism for recent Packer failures, but that year it was an ACL tear to 30-year-old Jordy Nelson that did them in. Without Nelson, the 2015 team has just the 16th-ranked pass offense in the league in spite of a completely healthy Rodgers and a more than competent rushing attack.
Davante Adams is young and has developed into an outstanding wideout, but his development took time, and because Adams didn’t really round into form until Nelson’s injury robbed him of much of his speed, the Packers have not really possessed a duo of good outside receivers since Greg Jennings and Jordy Nelson in 2012. This is a big problem because as it turns out, the offense can’t really function without at least one great outside receiver, and if you don’t have a duo like the Viking’s Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs, your entire offense is very vulnerable to injury.
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Many of the most important Packers are unusually old. Rodgers’ age is no secret, but Clay Matthews will be 32 next season, Mike Daniels will be 29, Morgan Burnett will be 29, and Jordy Nelson will be 33, and looks like he may be finished. After quarterback, the most important positions in football are the edge rushers. Putting pressure on a quarterback will make everyone else look good, and for many years Matthews did a fine job in this position, but he and Nick Perry have always been injury prone and that will not improve with age. The next most important position is outside receiver, and here again, the Packers find themselves vulnerable. The Packers are now vastly inferior to the Vikings in terms of talent. The Viking defense is better across the board, and the Viking receivers are much better than their Packer equivalents. Aaron Rodgers makes up for a lot of said deficiency, but that may not be true for much longer.
Aaron and Age
It’s worth noting that when Rodgers has played this year he hasn’t been very good. His interception percentage was an all-time high of 2.5%, and his adjusted net yards per attempt of 5.99 was a career low. Rodgers is still an excellent player and any decline is likely to be gradual, but it is still likely to come, and there is some reason to be pessimistic. In 2016 Rodgers was outstanding, completing 65.7% of his passes for 4,428 yards and 40 touchdowns. The only player 35 or older to eclipse those numbers was Peyton Manning in 2013 at the age of 37. If you bump the touchdowns down to 30, Drew Brees, Brett Favre and Kurt Warner enter the picture, but it’s a very short list.
It’s tempting to think that Rodgers can defy the aging curve as he is still extremely athletic, but that athleticism cuts two ways. Rodgers is extremely mobile in the pocket, willing to take a hit, and he remains an outstanding scrambler. His ability to scramble for first downs is an underrated part of his game, and has kept many Packer drives alive. His patience, movement and scrambling are all reasons that Rodgers is exceptional near the goal line as well. A decline in Rodgers’ athleticism could be catastrophic for the offense as it would severely impact the team’s ability to score touchdowns and convert 3rd downs. Rodgers is a great passer, but his other skills are what set him apart, and the Packers rely on his excellence to function. Rodgers might play well into his 40s, but it is increasingly likely that his best days are behind him and that he will continue to miss time occasionally. If Ted Thompson cannot reload the skill positions there is a good chance that the offense will finish outside of the top ten.
The Old Coaches
Jeff Fisher once coached a Tennessee Titans team that came within one yard of winning a Super Bowl. Eighteen years later he is essentially a laughingstock. Fisher ran the Rams from 2012-2016, and his tenure could most charitably be described as mediocre. He was fired at the end of last season, and was replaced by the 30-year-old Sean McVay. McVay was formerly the offensive coordinator in Washington, and he quickly exposed Fisher as the dinosaur he was, turning a formerly embarrassing team into an NFL juggernaut with no significant personnel upgrades. Fisher was a hard-nosed old-school coach I remember most for running Eddie George into the ground, and getting quarterback Steve McNair beaten to a pulp. McVay, on the other hand, runs an offense built on deception, where runs and passes can come from similar formations and personnel groups, and the defense has no foreknowledge of what they are about to see.
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It’s not all about age as Bill Belichick remains a genius in New England, but the new wave of great coaches now have greater responsibility to make life easier on their offense and quarterback. College schemes are currently far more innovative than their NFL counterparts, and the best in the NFL, including Belichick, have figured out the value of confusing their opponents, and not having any concept off limits.
When people talk about Packer coach most likely to be fired, most focus on Dom Capers, but Mike McCarthy should probably feel some heat as well. McCarthy’s focus is on executing his fairly simple scheme with perfection, but in this day and age that’s actually a bit lazy. There is a defense that has also been coached to execute and stop your offense, and if you are relying on your own strength and will to win battles, you are likely to be outsmarted. The Packer offense isn’t always stuck in stone, and McCarthy does make the occasional improvement, but the new blood in the league is light years ahead and moving even faster.
Finally
Brett Hundley played terribly against an elite Viking defense, but his receivers did nothing to help him. Jordy Nelson and Lance Kendricks each had huge drops, and Trevor Davis will not have a fun day in the film room when this play pops up:
Beating the Vikings was always going to be a tall order without Rodgers or Adams, but every backup skill position player outside of the running backs put together some terrible audition tape.
