BALTIMORE — Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is done chasing Brett Favre. He’s long been the better talent. He’s now officially had the better career, too. Rodgers tied Favre’s franchise record for touchdown passes (442) in Sunday’s 31-30 victory over the Baltimore Ravens, needing 46 fewer games and 1,729 fewer pass attempts to do so.
(Rodgers, we should add, also has 193 fewer interceptions in his career than Favre did during his 16 years as a Packer.)
Aaron Rodgers ties Brett Favre’s touchdown record
While Rodgers had multiple chances to break the record Sunday night — he called timeout twice in Green Bay’s last scoring drive and took an end-zone shot to Allen Lazard on third down — it’s fitting that he’ll almost certainly do so next weekend.
The Packers’ next game is at home. On national television. Against the Cleveland Browns (assuming their COVID-19 crisis is under control). The audience will be massive. The fans will love it. And if this is indeed Rodgers’ final season in Green Bay –which doesn’t seem nearly as likely as it did five months ago — he’s taking a hell of a curtain call.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Rodgers said when asked if he, on some level, was glad he missed Lazard on that throw. “I think the robot answer would be no, but the human answer is yes. There is something special about being able to do it at home. The competitor in me is a little upset that I didn’t just trust that the outside route was going to hold the corner long enough.
“When I was about to throw it, I felt like the corner was kind of in no man’s land, and I threw him kind of a ‘50% catch, 50% incompletion’ ball instead of trusting that the corner was going to attach to the outside route. We really had a chance to get him there. Also, with the three-man rush, I probably had a little more time than I thought. But of course, there’s definitely stuff inside me that’s excited about the prospect of doing it at home in front of our fans.”
Packers are the No. 1 seed in the NFC
Nonetheless, Rodgers has Green Bay back atop the NFC table. If the Packers win out, they’ll have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. That would make them the prohibitive favorites to return to the Super Bowl. And that would give Rodgers perhaps his last best chance to do something that Favre never could: bring multiple Lombardi trophies back to the town where Vince Lombardi coached.
Rodgers, as is often the case, was the difference Sunday. He completed 23 of 31 passes for 268 yards and 3 touchdowns. He didn’t throw a pick for the 10th time in 13 starts. And the wildest part was he wasn’t even at his best.
Rodgers had a couple of misses in the first half that could have been costly had the Ravens converted their late two-point conversion, including a deep ball to a wide-open Davante Adams that could have gone for a touchdown.
But that nit-picking just illustrates how great of a talent Rodgers is. If he plays to his ability over the season’s final three games, he would deserve his fourth MVP award in the last 11 seasons.
Rodgers should be a favorite for the 2021 MVP
In case you were wondering, that would be one more than the guy he replaced. When asked to compare Rodgers in 2020 (when he won the MVP) to Rodgers in 2021, Marquez Valdes-Scantling (5-98-1 receiving line on Sunday) responded:
“Of course, he’s had multiple games with multiple touchdowns and no picks. I don’t know how many guys can do that. He makes throw after throw that you are just like, ‘How did he get that ball in there?’ The one he threw to me in two minutes, it’s like, ‘How did that ball get through there?’ He’s the best.”
And now he has the record to prove it.