You see Aaron Rodgers now. You see the expressive smile. The belt-buckling confidence. The pure skill that puts him on the same level with some of the greats in football today. It’s all there.
One general manager, who requested anonymity, remembered just such a conversation about Rodgers during several draft meetings. “There was some debate about how much of what Rodgers was doing was the system and how much was Rodgers,” the general manager said.
There was a similar conversation across the league about Smith, who was taken first overall. The irony is that Smith turned out to be the system quarterback in college — not Rodgers.
The Bad Athlete Theory: Think about that for a second. Rodgers is probably the most athletic quarterback in football not named Vick, still NFL coaches and executives thought he was too stiff and non-athletic to be successful in the pros.
This is the funny part. The current Packers coach, Mike McCarthy, was the offensive coordinator on the 49ers staff that decided to go with Smith. McCarthy, too, at the time believed Smith wasn’t athletic enough to be a top player.
“He has since apologized about not thinking I was athletic enough,” said Rodgers, likely only half joking. “I’ll be honest with you, that’s one part of my game that I’ve always felt like I can add to an offense, and when I started hearing I wasn’t athletic, I take that personal.”
The NFL-Teams-Always-Screw-Up-Quarterbacks Theory: Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, Todd Marinovich, Rick Mirer, Joey Harrington, David Carr, Tim Couch, Andre Ware, Cade McNown, and a cast of thousands. So many busts, so little time.
Teams do deserve somewhat of a break. The position is almost impossible to predict. If a team’s lucky to get a Rodgers and not a Leaf they count their blessings and move on.
But the fact Rodgers once sat in the draft day Green Room — humiliated, teams passing him by — and now he’s at the Super Bowl, says a lot about Rodgers and perhaps more about the at-times highly flawed evaluation system.
“He is still growing, still getting better,” Thompson said. “I think we’ll be able to write all the history about him 10, 12, or 15 years from now.”
That’s about how long it must have felt for Rodgers that day … waiting.
Image via Wikipedia
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