Aaron Rodgers may not be having his best season right now, but he’s still a challenging quarterback to contain for any defense. Just ask Bobby Wagner, who’s faced Rodgers a number of times throughout his 11-year career.
The Rams will go up against Rodgers on Monday night, hoping to beat the Packers and win their second straight game. While Rodgers has all the talent in the world, from pinpoint accuracy to a strong arm, Wagner says it’s his mental processing and vision that makes him great.
“I would say that the biggest thing is you have to believe that everybody’s open because he sees them,” Wagner said Thursday. “He’s one of those guys that he has a great feel of the routes, where they’re supposed to be, things of that nature. Most quarterbacks, you can kind of follow their eyes, they’ll take you to the ball, but he’ll look to his left and then throw a pinpoint pass to the right and most quarterbacks can’t do that. You have to be conscious of when he extends plays, he knows how to use a cadence to his advantage. There’s so many things that he does well. He has complete command of the offense so he can come up and has the authority to change the whole play. It could be two different runs, but he can just turn into a pass. Sometimes he’s in his stance, sees a defender playing off and just gets out of his stance and then throws it to the receiver. Sometimes I don’t think everybody knows that that’s going on. He’s a very talented player and it’s always fun going against him.”
As the middle linebacker, Wagner attempts to diagnose the play the offense might be running. But with Rodgers, he often changes the play at the line of scrimmage to counter what the defense is doing.
Just about every quarterback has the authority to audible and change the play, but Rodgers is particularly good at it. And for Wagner, he has to do his best not to give away any tells before the snap to give Rodgers an advantage.
“It’s like chess. They’re watching you just like you’re watching them so if you give something away, he’ll change it to a play that puts you in a tough position,” Wagner added. “Whenever you play a quarterback like him, it’s just fun to play against because it’s really like chess. You’re trying to figure out what he sees, what he checks to, get a feel for what their game plan is for this particular game. It’s fun.”
Preparing for Rodgers doesn’t just involve watching film of the Packers. Wagner knows the importance of self-analyzing from the previous game, understanding that Rodgers will try to attack any sort of weakness he sees in the opposing defense.
“I think the biggest thing is when you watch film this week, you watch it in a way where they’re going to attack any weakness or any mistake that you made last week,” he said. “They’re going to try to incorporate it into their game whether they just line up in the play that you got beat on or they kind of window dress it or motion into it. He’s smart enough and that staff is smart enough to attack our defense in the run game and in the pass game in areas that we needed to improve on. We just need to make sure we make those improvements and be ready for him.”
This season, Rodgers has 22 touchdown passes and nine interceptions, the most picks he’s thrown in a season since 2010. It’s not the type of year we expected to see from the reigning two-time MVP, but he’s still one of the tougher quarterbacks to prepare for, especially after getting an extra week to prepare thanks to the bye.
