Life without Davante Adams has hardly been smooth sailing for Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers this season.
Rookie receiver Christian Watson has started to emerge in recent weeks but nothing came easy before then, with Rodgers even admitting in August the “young receivers” need to be “way more consistent”.
With that in mind, The Athletic’s Kalyn Kahler decided to dig a little deeper to try to answer one question: Why is it so hard to be a rookie wide receiver in an Rodgers offense?
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It turns out that Rodgers was definitely not a fan.
Speaking on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’, Rodgers said it was “by far the dumbest nothing-burger article I’ve read in the entire season” and that “95 percent of it” was “complete horses****”.
“This was the dumbest article of the year, by far.”
McAfee went on to join in by taking a few shots of himself at the article, which he said was “from anonymous sources” despite there not being a single anonymous source used.
“It alleged, from anonymous sources I believe, that you will use signals from . . . like two, three years ago and none of the wide receivers know what it means, the young guys specifically don’t know what it means, and then they get like accosted for not knowing what it means, when you never taught them that,” McAfee said.
“Is every word in that article bulls***?”
“Ninety-five percent of that article is absolute, complete horseshit, and the other five percent is exaggerated nothingness,” Rodgers replied.
“That fact that this is made to be, like I said, is the most ridiculous, nothing story that I’ve read the entire year, and that’s saying a lot.
“Oh, we have signals for our offense that we expect you guys to know? And then there was something that it’s not written or it’s not like stored anywhere, there’s not a file? I don’t know what that is.”
Put simply, it clearly struck a nerve with Rodgers and as for McAfee, he clearly had not read the article himself and Kahler called him out for it on social media.
In response, McAfee said he would address his mistake on the show and did so before going on to read the article, although not without once again criticizing its content and tone.
Even before the criticism on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’, Kahler joined ‘Locked on Packers’ to explain the article and what he had learned in speaking with current and former Packers players.
Central to the article is the veteran quarterback’s use of an array of hand signals, ones that are not written down anywhere or taught to players in any digestible way, even on film.
“It’s just in our brains,” back-up quarterback Jordan Love said in the piece.
“One of the reasons it is so hard is that anyone who has watched Aaron Rodgers, you guys have all seen him do these things at the line of scrimmage right before a play, he does this many times per game,” Kahler explained.
“He has this vast array of hand signals he will do. That’s changing the route, it could be a play concept, it could signal something he’s seeing in the defense and changing something on the fly. There’s about 30 of those that he expects his receivers to know but they don’t teach them.
“I learned this from my conversations with the players who had been there. I was told they don’t really teach them until the regular season begins because they’re making a bunch of cuts during camp and don’t really want to give that information away too soon to guys who will go within the division. Once the season begins they will start introducing these signals but they’re never officially taught.”
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Kahler spoke in total to 11 current and former Packers players — Randall Cobb, Sammy Watkins, Romeo Doubs, Chris Blair, Equanimeous St. Brown, Kylin Hill, Jordan Love, Shaun Beyer, Jace Sternberger, Robert Tonyan and Amari Rodgers.
All 11 provided their own perspectives on playing in the Packers offense, detailing the challenges of being new to the system but also clearly taking responsibility for their role in ultimately dictating their success.
There are certainly other external factors that have contributed to the first-year receivers’ struggles this season, namely injuries and the same teething problems most rookies face.
In the case of Watson, he only played four of the first seven games of the season and it was not until Week 10 against Dallas that he played in over 80 percent of the snaps, scoring three touchdowns in a breakout performance.
While Rodgers and McAfee were highly critical of Kahler’s article and choice of sources, many other members of the media were quick to defend The Athletic journalist.
“Frankly, I don’t think Rodgers or McAfee even read the article,” wrote Mike Florio.
“There isn’t a single anonymous source used. Kahler meticulously harvested and presented on-the-record quotes from current and former teammates regarding the hand-signal meetings specifically and, more broadly, the challenges that young receivers face when trying to get in the good graces of Aaron Rodgers.
“… Good relationships are critical to the success of any organization. Rodgers failed to quickly establish good relationships with his young receivers. And it has hurt the team’s prospects in 2022. Kahler’s article makes that reality even more clear.
“Maybe that’s why he called it ‘horses***’. The truth is that he doesn’t want people to realize that, in reality, he’s the horse in this equation — and that he’s the one dropping the s*** all over the place.”
That’s probably going too far but there were still several other more considered takes pointing out the fact Kahler’s article was not specifically critical of Rodgers but more simply trying to give information that may better put the rookies’ issues in context.
Context like real statistics, including the fact Packers’ rookie receivers drafted in the first four rounds between 2008 and 2021 have finished their rookie years averaging 26.7 targets, 19.5 receptions, 230.5 receiving yards and 1.3 touchdown receptions.
“In the same time span,” Kahler went on to write, “the 31 other teams in the NFL drafted 219 wide receivers in the first four rounds who averaged nearly double the targets as Green Bay’s rookies in their first seasons (50.7), as as well as 30.1 receptions, 400 receiving yards and 2.5 touchdowns”.
In this case, it is hard to ignore that without Adams, there may need to be more thought given to making it easier for rookie receivers to adjust to the offense.
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