Six games into the season with a dragging offense, we should stop debating and take Aaron Rodgers at his word. Whatever the Green Bay Packers are doing, it’s not working.
Now it’s time for Green Bay to hand Rodgers the keys to the offense and find out whether he’s right about head coach Matt LaFleur’s motion-based scheme.
At the very least, such a surrender of control would help resolve this repetitive “personnel vs. coaching” tennis match that always seems to break out in the middle of Packers football struggles. The same one that Rodgers jabbed right on the nose following Green Bay’s 27-10 loss to the New York Jets, after which he told reporters, “If you think we have the right players, then we need to simplify things. If you don’t, then that’s a whole other conversation.”
Welcome to a familiar portion of the season, when “it’s either players or scheme” becomes the satellite argument orbiting the MVP quarterback. The only difference now is Green Bay’s offensive problems might not be an either/or situation. This time, with the loss of star receiver Davante Adams and the infusion of two rookie wideouts, the Packers’ issues may be the players and the scheme, each infecting the other on a unit that’s scoring an anemic 17.8 points per game.
Aaron Rodgers vs. Matt LaFleur: QB details exactly what he dislikes in scheme
Is Rodgers part of that problem? Maybe. But if you’ve been listening since August, there’s little doubt what he thinks is part of the solution: Less of LaFleur’s motion-based scheme and more of the precision-based, West Coast type of football that makes things simpler for the quarterback at the line of scrimmage.
Let’s look at two quotes from Rodgers that tell a large part of this story. Nobody else has to tell you what he thinks because Rodgers has done a good job of it himself. All it takes is overlapping what appeared to be two very honest moments from him.
First, absorb his words after the loss to the Jets, which was Rodgers at his most unfiltered — not the days after when he tried to soften the edges with clarifications. Pay attention to the comment about the motioning in LaFleur’s scheme, arguably Rodgers’ most specific point.
“I just think that based on how we’ve played the last two weeks, I think it’s going to be in our best interests to simplify things for everybody — for the line, for the backs, for the receivers, especially with [Randall Cobb’s] injury,” Rodgers told reporters. “Just simplify some things, and maybe that’ll help us get back on track. … [Be]cause, on the couple drives that we did move the ball, it was very simple things. Very simple plays, no motion, so we need to look at everything and the guys that we’ve got and what we can accomplish with them, and let’s be smart about moving forward. Nobody works harder than Matt on the plan each week, and nobody comes with better ideas than him and his staff. But if it’s not working, it’s not because those guys aren’t grinding. It’s because we’re not executing.”
Overlap this with what Rodgers told the “Pardon My Take” podcast during a training camp interview in August. Hang with us here as it’s a long quote, but it says a lot in the context of what is happening now.
“I tell Matt all the time, this scheme has flaws,” Rodgers said. “This scheme is way different than I — I grew up in the West Coast offense. The West Coast offense I think is the most beautiful offense ever created. It’s about timing and rhythm and balance and everything makes sense protection-wise. You know where your [hot reads] are. You know where your eye is going every single time. You know how the concepts fit together. [LaFleur’s offense] is a schematic offense. [The West Coast offense] was not a schematic offense. That was built on timing, precision and rhythm and guys being in the right spot at the right time and putting the ball on the proper number. … In that [West Coast] offense though, it’s not predicated on motion. It’s predicated on winning 1-on-1 matchups and then being accurate throwing the football. That’s what I grew up in.
“I marveled at Peyton Manning, during his prime, would run all two-by-two and three-by-one [receiver] formations with no motion. Just because he wanted to look at it and use his cadence variation to get movement and then be able to go with tempo as well. When you have so much motion, it’s hard to get tempo going. Because you’ve always got to make sure you’re set and [then] you’ve got a motion, maybe a double motion, maybe this thing, maybe this adjustment off of it. I tell [LaFleur] the same thing — I’m not telling you guys anything I wouldn’t tell him — I got after him today because every freaking play there’s a goddamn motion. I’m like, ‘Can we run one play without a motion and pass so we can get some tempo going?’ Because I like to switch the tempo.”
Using those two quotes as a Rosetta Stone, Rodgers is saying he wants to “simplify” things so that they can be understood more clearly. For Rodgers, there’s too many complicated things going on for too many inexperienced people and it’s putting him in a position where he can’t line up behind the center and shift into his mode of playing the other side of the football. Specifically, instead of just diagnosing how the defensive front is lined up, or trying to determine what disguise is coming, or listening for defensive signals, he’s worrying about going through whatever motion is designed into a particular play and making sure everyone is where they need to be.
How Rodgers thinks he can fix it
All of this is about control and clarity. We can make it more complicated than that, but in a nutshell, Rodgers has already told us what the problems are. He wants to do what Manning did for years under offensive coordinator Tom Moore with the Indianapolis Colts. Line up in front of a defense, diagnose what he sees, make the correct read and then make an accurate throw to a spot. All of which puts less pressure on the offensive players around the quarterback because the scheme isn’t predicated on the multitude of different run/pass/screen options that come into a play when employing pre-snap motions.
Running a motion offense can put a lot of pressure on defenses because they are decoding a moving set of players right up to the snap and have to make the right adjustments quickly. Conversely, running a West Coast offense is a more straightforward scheme where an experienced quarterback like Rodgers can diagnose what he sees, make sure the protections are correct and then make the right choice versus what he’s reading across the line of scrimmage. It’s also simple enough that it can be shifted into a no-huddle mode (an example of what Rodgers refers to as “tempo”) where Rodgers is calling the play at the line of scrimmage in a manner that puts defenses on their heels from one play to the next.
There is an argument for both schemes. The motion concepts that LaFleur is employing have roots in some very successful schemes that have filtered out from San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. Most point to Shanahan and the Los Angeles Rams’ Sean McVay as being the most creative architects with motion offenses. But it’s also not a fresh concept anymore. It can be argued that defenses are catching up to the litany of different looks that come out of the scheme.
Of course, the same can be said for the West Coast offense, which has been around in various iterations since it was invented by former San Diego Chargers head coach Don Coryell in the late 1970s and wildly popularized by the San Francisco 49ers’ Bill Walsh in the 1980s. Typically, the success of the West Coast offense comes down to the mastery and smarts of the quarterback who is running it and whether or not the players around him are detail-oriented enough to do their jobs with precision. If a team has a marriage of both, the West Coast system can still be run today with great success.
We can argue whether or not these Packers have the right personnel or experience around Rodgers to run more of a West Coast scheme. We can’t argue whether or not Rodgers is comfortable with it. He says he is and has already made it clear going all the way back to the summer that he’d like to play more of it. This despite coming off back-to-back MVP seasons running LaFleur’s scheme.
We must remember that Rodgers no longer has Davante Adams. It’s a fact he’s surely taking into account with the number of complicated checks that he has to go through before snapping the football. He also has an offensive line that is struggling with chemistry and a backfield that seems to be stubbornly splitting touches between Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon despite Jones clearly being more effective through six games.
Really, the only thing that matters at this point is that the offense and personnel are struggling, and the MVP quarterback doesn’t feel comfortable with what he’s doing. He’s also stating that he knows what can help fix the problems. That opens an avenue that might not be palatable for LaFleur, but also could provide clarity: Give in and let Rodgers run more of the sets he wants. Bend the scheme toward what makes him comfortable. See what happens from there. The worst-case scenario is that it spectacularly fails, at which point Rodgers will have to face reality.
Maybe it’s the players. Maybe it’s the scheme. Or maybe it’s both, with the quarterback being as responsible as anyone else in that equation. It’s time for Green Bay to hand the keys to Rodgers and let him try to fix it. If he gets his wish and can’t, then he was exactly right on Sunday: This is a whole other conversation.