He had like 30 seconds and two timeouts to drive for a field goal, and lost one timeout on an injury. That's asking a lot. It's more reasonable to ask the defense to play a little better than to ask Aaron Rodgers to constantly bail them out and generate some heroics. Mike Daniels said it well. The Packers scored enough points to win. None of those points were scored by the defense. Aaron Rodgers played well enough for the Packers to win. The Packers defense has to be better against franchise QBs, or they will never win another Super Bowl under this administration.

Originally Posted by: DoddPower 

If Rodgers played up to his salary, we would have won. If Rodgers' salary equaled his play, maybe 12M, we'd have House and/or Hayward on the roster instead of Goodson and Whitehead and Atl may not have scored 33.

Originally Posted by: Barfarn 

I'm not applying different standards out of some sort of emotional connection to the Packers. Your logic is so laughably easily used to counter your own conclusion I'm not even sure how to approach this.

Bears beat Vikes because the the defense sucked. Sure Bradford missed a TD and a few other throws, yes the OTs suck and put the D in a position to win; but had the defense been serviceable, Minny would have won. And actually if the defense did their job, I bet Bradford scores more points because they get better field position and are controlling the clock.

Now, I'm not pretending there's different degrees of blame. Yes, the OL shoulders more blame than any one component of the team. But yet again, you're laser focused on ONE person who you choose to assign all the blame on. Sure, when people repeatedly hammer you for it you'll give a "Yeah I suppose other people could have played better but RODGERS RODGERS RODGERS". Are you one of those guys that complains about legitimately bad calls in the 3rd quarter and say it cost your team the game? No, it didn't. Yes, they got screwed. Yes, it probably cost points. But if you want to win in this league you need to be able to get beyond these issues because they happen every single week.

Rogers should have played better which would have made it easier on the defense and his receivers
The RBs should have played better which would have made it easier on Rodgers and the WRs
McCarthy should have called better plays and run the ball more to make it easier on the offense
The offense as a whole should have played better so the defense wasn't on the field as much
The defense should have played better which would have made it easier on the offense

You want to nitpick about percentages? Fine. You want to say it's 80/5/5/5 blame? I don't necessarily agree but I'm not going to not respect your reasoning because of it and I'll be more interested in what you have to say. But yet again, you're fixating on one singular player and in some cases, twisting things to make it appear to be entirely or almost entirely one player's fault when your logic can easily be turned around to counter your own conclusions. I don't get it. You keep going back to his salary every time you start trying to justify why anything that's even partially his fault is entirely his fault. Yes, if you're talking about his value to his team he's relevant. But if you're talking about what makes teams win and lose individual football games, that's not the way that works.

Originally Posted by: Porforis 

The assumption is that if Rodgers plays better, the Packers win. You want to criticize one drive or play? Perfectly fair and I agree with parts of your argument. Where this starts going into loony-town is when you start making these kinds of silly assumptions. What if Rodgers plays like Tom Brady having the best game of his life but a WR fumbles the ball, the OL collapses on one play and he's hit within two seconds (which, they weren't able to block three people with 6 on that last drive), or he drives into FG range before running out of time and Crosby shanks it? Assumptions assumptions assumptions.

Originally Posted by: Porforis 

You're strawmanning when you say I put 100% blame on Rodgers; never have; never will [Did you even read what I wrote?]. I'm just staying he is the one guy that BUT FOR his failures in performance at critical times, GB seals the deal in Atl. And you say that you're reversing the logic on the Minny example; you're not; your reversing the facts by changing the degree to which players messed up. EG, giving up 20 points is a little better than league average [22], but quite good when O has constant 3 and outs.

Originally Posted by: Barfarn 

You speak of logic, but then you abandon it. To test a hypothesis you need to control all other variables not wildly imagine how other variables could have changed. When testing the hypothesis that Rodgers CHOKED on last drive and on the 3rd down of each of the first two 2nd half drives, we look at what each player actually did on those drives/plays and determine who if any screwed up. Clearly, we see Rodgers did. We next test whether those failures caused GB to fail to "seal the deal" by controlling all other variables, that is, assuming that all the players would have performed as they did.

Originally Posted by: Barfarn 

If Rodgers played up to his salary, we would have won. If Rodgers' salary equaled his play, maybe 12M, we'd have House and/or Hayward on the roster instead of Goodson and Whitehead and Atl may not have scored 33.

Originally Posted by: Barfarn 

If Rodgers played up to his salary, we would have won.If Rodgers' salary equaled his play, maybe 12M, we'd have House and/or Hayward on the roster instead of Goodson and Whitehead and Atl may not have scored 33.

Originally Posted by: Barnfan