Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers neatly rebuffed their mid-season critics with an impressive season-ending, six-game winning streak. His work is not done.
The Packers quarterback has a bigger legacy question to deal with — his pedestrian post-season record — as the winners of the NFC North prepare for the New York Giants in their play-off opener in the early hours of Monday morning.
Rodgers won a Super Bowl and was named the game’s Most Valuable Player after the 2010 season, in his third year starting.
Since that career-boosting performance established him as one of the NFL’s top-tier quarterbacks, Rodgers has logged a 3-5 post-season mark, and no more trips to the championship game.
No question Rodgers, 36, ranks with some of the all-time greats as an individual performer.
■ NFL first round play-off predictions: Packers edge out Giants, Steelers too strong for Dolphins
He collected regular-season MVP titles in 2011 and 2014. He holds several career passing records, including the top rating (104.1) and a 4.13-to-1 touchdown pass-interception ratio. He threw a league-high 40 TD passes this season, with only seven interceptions.
What he is missing is something his opposing quarterback this week already has on his resume: multiple Super Bowl championships.
Eli Manning of the Giants has had his ups and downs over the years, and he is considered the second-best quarterback in his own family, to retired older brother Peyton.
But Eli has two rings, matching his brother and joining a list of 12, mostly Hall of Famers, with more than one.
Since replacing Green Bay hero Brett Favre — another one-and-done Super Bowl champion — in 2008 and quickly ascending to top-tier status, Rodgers’s post-seasons have turned into a five-year broken promise.
He and his team will try again as the NFC’s No 4 seed, but also as a popular pick to end their feeble five-year trek down Super Bowl road.
No one has been better the last six weeks, after a four-game losing streak, when Rodgers uttered his now-infamous boast in November: “I feel like we can run the table.”
He backed up his bold declaration, personally. Rodgers threw 15 touchdown passes with no interceptions in the 6-0 run, which culminated in last week’s NFC North showdown with the Detroit Lions.
Rodgers was dominant, showing off his trademark skill, scrambling out of the pocket and creating big plays out of nothing.
Rodgers shrugs off the criticism he took when the Packers were 4-6, and media members questioned his relationship with his teammates and coach Mike McCarthy.
“It’s a fun group of guys and it’s been fun to win, fun to do it the way we did it the last six weeks,” he said, putting an end to the chirping — for now. The streak moved the Pack to 10-6, but it left them vulnerable as a potential road team as the post-season unfolds. First things first.
New York coach Ben McAdoo, who spent time as Green Bay’s quarterback coach during Rodgers’s early years in the NFL, still admires his former pupil from afar. “He’s on fire,” McAdoo said this week of Rodgers.
“He’s taking care of the ball and moving well out of the pocket, making all the throws. I don’t have any kryptonite.”
If Rodgers keeps channelling Superman and winning games with spectacular play, the kryptonite reference may become relevant.
If the veteran quarterback slips quietly out of the play-offs again, Superman will be the last character anyone thinks of.
Rodgers meant it in a positive way when he said after beating the Lions, “Anything can happen when we get to the play-offs.”
Unfortunately for him lately, that has not been good.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport