Aaron Rodgers says Green Bay Packers shouldn’t overreact to ‘stinker’ in 2021 opener
blown off the field against the New Orleans Saints in their most lopsided opener in decades, a “stinker” as Aaron Rodgers called it. Suddenly it was time to reevaluate the Packers’ outlook for the 2021 season.
That season, of course, ended with the NFC’s top overall seed locked up before their finale in Detroit. Which is the best any team can achieve in the regular season.
A year later, the coming preseason has sharpened memories of that 38-3 loss to the Saints. Coach Matt LaFleur has informed his top players their preparation for the 2022 season might be different. Backup quarterback Jordan Love will start Friday night’s preseason opener in San Francisco and next week’s lone preseason game at Lambeau Field, but who plays in the finale remains an open discussion.
Rodgers, already letting his coach know how he feels about playing preseason snaps, made his feelings on the subject known Tuesday.
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“I don’t see any benefit to it,” Rodgers said. “I definitely don’t see any benefit to playing one series. If we’re going to play, we should play and play a quarter, a couple series – two or three series. Just suiting up for four plays, to me, is a waste. I’m not saying this to send a message to Matt. I’ve already told Matt the same thing. So we’ll see what happens when we get there.”
If the idea was sacrificing the opener for the greater good, the Packers couldn’t have asked last season to play out any better.
“I mean, that’s the question,” Rodgers said. “There’s injuries in football all the time. So I think it’s kind of a no-win situation to the outside of the building. If somebody gets hurt, ‘Oh, I can’t believe they played our guys.’ But if we go out and have a stinker, ‘I can’t believe they didn’t play them.’ So I think you’ve just got to do what’s best for the squad.
“Matt’s going to do that. He’s going to lean on the leaders of the football team, and if he feels like we need to go out and play, we’ll go out and play. But I don’t want to go out and just play three plays. That, to me, is a waste of time.”