Legacy, Not Love, Fueling Rodgers
GREEN BAY, Wis. – As an aging quarterback with a burning desire to add another Super Bowl to his legendary resume, Aaron Rodgers probably didn’t need the motivational kick in the pants of having Jordan Love selected in the first round.
“He’s a pro’s pro,” Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said of Rodgers after drafting Love. “He’s playing for legacy-type things, not only in Green Bay but for the National Football League, historic-type stuff. I know he’s very, very motivated.”
Two of his closest friends on the team agree. What drives the 36-year-old Rodgers are his twin goals of winning championships and playing high-quality football into his 40s. The addition of Love neither had Rodgers ratcheting up the intensity of his workouts or wallowing in a pity party.
“I don’t think it’ll have any type of effect on him. I don’t think it’s going to drive him to be a better player or have him sunk in a hole,” receiver Davante Adams said on Tuesday. “Aaron’s a lot like me, or I’m a lot like him, however you want to put it. Truly confident players who know what they’re capable of and know what they’ve done, and they continue to work to be better than what they were. They don’t necessarily need [external motivation]. I don’t care if they brought Julio Jones in here. That’s not going to necessarily make me word harder, because I’m already a workhorse and I already know I’m trying to be better than what I was last year. Them bringing in a rookie quarterback, it may have shocked [him]. It’s no secret, we were all expecting to have a receiver drafted, but that wasn’t the case. So, Aaron’s going to come in balling and doing his thing, and he’s got the right mind-set.”
Left tackle David Bakhtiari spent part of the offseason working out with Rodgers. While Rodgers admittedly was surprised – and perhaps disappointed – by the team’s selection of Love, he apparently didn’t spend a week pouting on the couch while surrounded by empty ice-creams tubs and pizza boxes.
As Bakhtiari said on June 9: “I can just reflect on even today, we were out there running around today on our conditioning day and the guy’s still got his wheels. I’m proud of him on that end. We still compete. I know that fire still burns in him deep. He still will in his own way make sure that he’ll still try to win in every facet. He’s the most competitive person I’ve met and, yes, I always expect the most out of him because I know, at least for my expectations, that he can deliver on that end.”
With a couple of subpar seasons – at least by his otherworldly standards – Rodgers has lost some of the luster from his once-blinding star. In NFL Network’s player-voted “Top 100 Players of 2020,” Rodgers checked in at No. 16 after being No. 8 in 2019. That ranking stood out to Adams.
“This means absolutely nothing, but I saw something that said that the last couple times he was named outside of the top 10 of the top 100, that he won MVP,” Adams said with a smile. “So, we can’t rule it out. It’s happened before twice so we’ll see.”
For Rodgers to play at an MVP level and championship level, a passing game that never quite came together last season is going to have to come together quickly this season. The COVID-19 pandemic meant offseason practices were eliminated. The big addition to the receiver group, Devin Funchess, opted out. Time will be of the essence to master coach Matt LaFleur’s schematic tweaks and for some weapons opposite Davante Adams to emerge.
“The team that’s able to deal with it the quickest will probably come out the hottest at the beginning,” Rodgers said on Monday. “As we learned last year, it’s about peaking at the right time, starting off fast but then maintaining it throughout a long season. Again, we’re hopeful that we can play the entire season, but there will be a lot of things we’ve got to do. Where it used to be a nine-week offseason, a training camp, four preseason games, we’ve got to do in a short amount of time. The urgency is definitely up with us.”
