He's the #1 Offensive threat Rodgers has. Need a short pass for a 1st down? No problem. Beat a DB deep? No problem. Redzone. Big problem... for the other guys. When you add up all the ways this guy can help he is our #1 guy.
"dhazer" wrote:
This is the part that bothers me and when Finley was in Rodgers seemed like he was forcing the ball to him aka Favre to Sharpe. The offense seemed to be more fluid without him and they spread the ball around.
"warhawk" wrote:
I think that's somewhat true, and others have mentioned it as well. But I really think the problem was that the O-line was very shaky early in the season. Having to adjust to the loss of Ryan Grant may have contributed as well. Rodgers was having to get rid of the ball quickly. Jennings did not have time to run his routes. It was only natural that Rodgers would key in on Finley, who as a TE runs shorter routes and is better able to catch the ball when he isn't really open. As a result, his stats got inflated a bit at the expense of everyone else.
In the second half of the 2009 season, Finley was at his best and the offense was rolling. Jennings was putting up good numbers too. I think that if Finley had stayed healthy we would've seen a similar offense once the line got settled. Hopefully that's what they'll get back to in 2011. A lot depends on the O-line, in my opinion.