For your viewing pleasure:

http://forums.49ers.com/messageboard/showthread.php?t=77529 

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I have to say if Rodgers and Smith would have been switched you folks would be laughing at Rodgers right now. In case you forgot he sucked in preseason his first year on a good team. He would have been thrown into the starting job right away on a shitty team and i can bet he would be just like Smith who is actually playing better now.

Like others have said Rodgers fell into an ideal spot of being able to sit on the bench and learn for 3 years before he had to take over.

So take a long look at some of these players you laugh at and just wonder what they would have been like on other teams.

The one i like discussing is what if Emmitt and Barry switched teams, I believe that Barry would have had at least 3 2000 yard seasons and owned all the rushing records and Emmitt wouldn't have been much more than an average running back.

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Rodgers was in a good situation for sure. I still think it takes a special player to improve as much as he did. There is a lot more to it than "here's your clipboard and 3 years later, hey I'm good." I'm sure most players given time to learn would get better but I doubt many of them would become as good as Rodgers is now.

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I agree with dhazer for the most part. It's really to hard to say if the roles were reversed, we wouldn't be praising Smith and laughing at another Tedford QB bust.

Rodgers so far has been able to shake the moniker that Tedford QBs can't be successful at an NFL level and getting to sit for 3 years behind Favre and spend two years learning McCarthy's system from the bench probably benefited him a lot more than some are willing to admit.

Regardless, I think anyone who is a Packers fan can't but be happy we've been able to make, at least to this point, a smooth transition from a guy who piloted the team for 16 years to one who seems to be poised to be around for at least the next decade. I think a lot of NFL teams would kill to be able to do that every time a change like that is made.

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Agreed with Hazer and RainX. Rodgers landed in a perfect team, perfect timing. 3 Years watching / learning packages / reading blitz's etc... off and on field experience etc... helped Rodgers development a lot.

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For those of you who keep bringing up Favre,let me remind you of his primadonna quote after Rodgers was drafted: "its not my job to mentor him. My job is to play and thats what im gonna do"...Rodgers didnt learn SHIT from Favre except not to be a selfish player behind the scenes...Rodgers just had the opportunity to learn the system in 3 years where most rookie QB's get thrown into the fire their first year...It also helped he had a good QB coach (Mccarthy) to help with his progress...If anything,teams should take notes to how the Packers dealt with Rodgers...Give your rookie QB's some time and you'll see the true potential of that individual...

I do think that he learned some stuff from Favre. He might've felt threatened for a while, but you saw shots of Favre explaining stuff to Rodgers often enough. Rodgers was always the first one to high five Favre as well, with his clipboard in his hands.

I know that for most people it's, or Rodgers, or Favre right now, but both of them are QBs who are/where greated and we have always cheered for. Although a healthy dose of reality on Favre did somewhat hurt.

Just by watching Brett Favre from the sidelines for 3 years he picked up a lot of things that most QB's missed. Like Rockmolder said Favre and Rodgers did look pretty close on most occasions.

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I think I've read that Favre mellowed quite a bit after his initial anger at the Rodgers selection. I seem to remember Favre and Rodgers having that 'competition' throwing the football into nets in the corner of the endzone.

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From a thread at 49ers.com:



I would give more credence to this guy if he gave even a modicum of effort to making his posts readable, but it is an interesting perspective nonetheless.

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