FADE IN:
INTERIOR. Business Office.
OPEN on a small room with a man in a suit sitting behind a desk. Another man is pacing back and forth in a frazzled manner with a binder overflowing with papers. He’s trying to pitch a movie.
Screenwriter: “Okay. So, here’s the idea. The team starts out 4-6. They get blown out by two NFL bottom-feeders in back-to-back games. It’s bad. People are calling for the coach’s head. They’re saying that the once-great quarterback is washed up. But, lo and behold, the QB essentially says, ‘Relax. Don’t worry your pretty little heads. We’ve got this,’ and they do. The team finishes the season on a six-game winning streak including a win against its division rivals in the final week. Then, they play a team that has owned them in the playoffs. The superstar, let’s call him Aaron, throws a Hail Mary to end the first half. They beat that team. Then, listen to this, the next week he plays the rejuvenated No. 1 seed and he throws a 35-yard strike to a washed-up journeyman to set up a game-winning field goal. Two games later, he’s sitting atop the world with a ten-game winning streak and the Super Bowl trophy.”
Head of the studio: “Come on. Doesn’t that seem a little too good to be true? I mean, even Rudy is more believable.”
END SCENE
Two more games.
That’s all Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers need to finish this seemingly unattainable movie script.
They will.
Right now Rodgers is playing better than everyone else in football, and it’s not even close. With a depleted wide receiver staff and offensive line, No. 12 has been the Rumpelstiltskin of Green Bay and turned straw into gold.
With 18 seconds left on the clock in Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, Rodgers made one of the more spectacular throws in recent NFL history. He dropped back, spun to his left and threw the ball — on the run — across his body with pinpoint precision to his receiver cutting across the field.
It essentially clinched the game for the Packers and cemented Rodgers’ status as the best quarterback in the game right now.
To further exemplify his brilliance, it wasn’t the coaches who drew up the play but the ol’ gunslinger.
“Cobb said the final play was not an actual play call,” tweeted Robert Klemko, a football writer for Sports Illustrated. “Rodgers just told each receiver what to do, like a kid drawing in the dirt. Seriously.”
The myth of Rodgers’ skill set grows with each game. He has the legs to move around in the pocket and the arm to hit his players with the ball in stride, no matter their location on the field.
The game of football has shifted gradually to a quarterback league. Running backs aren’t irrelevant, but their impact has surely diminished with the rule-changes favoring the man in the pocket.
Top quarterbacks have become messiahs for their team. If they play well, the team will win. It’s that simple.
With quarterbacks Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan in his way, Rodgers will surely be tested over the next 120 minutes of football. However, it seems destined that this is his season.
He’s just on a higher plane than everyone else. It’s almost unfathomable for him not to reign supreme once again.
Sometimes reality is better than fiction. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers are proving that one game at a time.
gigottfr@indiana.edu
@gott31
