Aaron looked like he was pretty stiff after the touchdown run and looked like he was covering it up.

That combined with the peppers hit made him look OFF for the rest of the game. Suddenly his famous accurate throws were at the feet of receivers and low. And that throw to urlacher would have never happened if he was in his right mind.

It's good that the superbowl is in two weeks.

His bad throws came after the touchdown run.
His bad decisions came after the hit.

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From what longtime has shown us, and I've checked NFL.com for the play-by-play and he seemed to be right, Rodgers only threw 5 passes after the Peppers hit. The Urlacher interception was well before that hit and that was probably the only bad decision he made.

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After watching that, I felt like I was watching Brett again. I've never seen Rodger make a throw like that before. But unlike Brett, Aaron made the tackle to prevent the pick six (Favre would usually just into the first D linemen he saw and get knocked down.

I felt like that throw, and the sack on third down that knocked us out of FG range were his only bad decision of the game.

This is correct. He did miss two throws after having his bell rung, so I was watching him closely wondering if that same post hit suckage was going to ensue. He threw two great passes (mentioned above) that led me to believe that he was ok. The two that he missed made me wonder. he was rushed on those, so I suspect that, it doesn't matter either way as we won and he has two weeks to recover. Protection will be more than key against the Steelers.

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Protection will be key for the Steelers against the Packers too.

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Good thing we're going up against James Harrison, who has a track record for apologizing after each tackle.

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I've got an idea, lets just start at page 5 next time... :icon_smile:

I certainly noticed "The Gaze" during the game and commented on it in the chat room. I was furious about it. Rodgers staggered about immediately after the heat and appeared wobbly for a couple of plays, with a glazed look in his eyes. I immediately wondered if he had been concussed.

Two players actually made contact with Rodgers' head during that play. I know that football is a high-speed, violent sport and shit happens. I believe the slap on the helmet (and near facemask grab) falls into this category, so it didn't bother me so much. However, Peppers' hit was clearly intentional and malicious. That it was well aimed is evidenced by the fact that Rodgers was standing straight up and never once ducked his head during the course of the blow. For such a flagrant hit I believe Peppers should have been ejected, but at the bare minimum he should be given a stiff fine.

The problem with ejections as a punishment for such infractions is that they don't impact the player individually all that much. I believe that, at least for repeat offenders, ejection should be accompanied by automatic forfeiture of the game check. I think ejection would bring peer pressure to bear upon the player, while forfeiture of pay would affect the player where it hurts, and would affect highly paid players proportionately as harshly as lower-paid players.

I had thought that perhaps an equitable model would be to impose a prorated forfeiture of pay; e.g., a personal foul in the fourth quarter lead to forfeiture of 25% of the game check, while an infraction in the first quarter would lead to forfeiture of the entire game check. However, that might lead to a plethora of devastating hits in the waning moments of games. The best strategy seems to be forfeiture of the game check, since an ejection is effectively a suspension anyway. Any multi-game suspensions for repeat offenders should be without pay.

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tsk tsk

Ever heard of an accent? For all you know, I'm Italian.

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