Rodgers’ MVP Season Fueled by Open Receivers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Talk about a Percentage Triple Crown.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers led the NFL in touchdown percentage, interception percentage and completion percentage. With staggering numbers, he’s the presumptive NFL MVP.

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It’s not all Rodgers, though. Case in point: Sunday’s victory over Chicago. Rodgers completed 19-of-24 passes for 240 yards. If not for Marquez Valdes-Scantling’s drop, he would have had more touchdowns (five) than incompletions (three, since there wouldn’t have been a third-down incompletion).

According to Zebra Technologies, whose RFID technology makes the NFL’s Next Gen Stats possible, Rodgers didn’t have a single tight-window throw vs. the Bears.

For the season, he had the second-lowest tight window percentage in the NFL (11.2 percent).

In other words, a group of pass catchers deemed not good enough before the draft got open again and again throughout the season. How is that possible?

“I think it goes back to them being better at their craft, from understanding what we’re trying to accomplish within the system,” offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett said last week.

The Packers made the absolute best of an offseason filled with Zoom calls instead of practices. It was no longer coach Matt LaFleur’s offense. Nor was it Rodgers’ way of running an offense. It was Green Bay’s offense, a hybrid born of last year’s experiences and this year’s conversations.

“I think what the offseason did was allow us to really crawl through the installs,” Rodgers said last week. “Really, Matt and Hackett and myself and (passing game coordinator Luke) Getsy put our heads together and we went through concepts and threw out stuff that just didn’t work or didn’t fit our personnel. Stuff that maybe I liked from the previous offense that just really didn’t fit and work anymore, we just threw it out. There was stuff that Matt had run in his past that we kind of tried to fit guys in spots, and it wasn’t really clicking (so) we threw it out. And we were able to get creative about certain things as well and put stuff in that we liked, or that we saw from other teams that we thought could be good wrinkles off stuff we did.”

The proof is in the staggering statistics.

– Green Bay led the NFL with 509 points, 133 points more than last season and second-most in franchise history.

– Rodgers led the NFL with a career-high 48 touchdown passes this season, tied with Pro Football Hall of Famer Dan Marino (1984) for fifth-most in NFL history. And he led the NFL with a 121.5 passer rating, the second-highest mark behind Rodgers’ 122.5 in 2011.

– Davante Adams led the NFL with 18 touchdown receptions, tied for the third-most receiving touchdowns in NFL history behind Hall of Famers Randy Moss (23 in 2007) and Jerry Rice (22 in 1987).

– Adams and tight end Robert Tonyan were marvels of efficiency. Tonyan was No. 1 in the NFL among non-running backs in catch percentage (88.1) and Adams was No. 5 among receivers (77.2).

Throw it superb pass protection, a quality running game and a lethal play-action attack, the offense has been running at peak efficiency for most of the season.

“We’re just allowed to do some more things and the entire offensive package has expanded,” Hackett said of Year 2 in LaFleur’s offense. “Those adjustments can be made during the game and it’s not like you have to have it in your game plan that week. We’ve done a lot of different stuff and the guys are really good at all those different things that we’re trying to throw at them. Maybe we throw a new idea trying to attack a guy a certain way and the guys are picking it up real quick because we’re not having to worry about all the other things and the base foundation of the system. The base foundation, that’s something that you can do easily each week and you can throw some of those unique plays in week in and week out. I think those are some of those plays that have shown up.”