Can Aaron Rodgers Function Behind a Poor Quality Offensive Line?
Rodgers has been protected for most of his career.
Aaron Rodgers has not played for a team with a below-average offensive line since 2009. The Packers have almost always had excellent offensive lines throughout the Aughts and 20s. A couple of years, they ranked #1 in the league in PFF pass-blocking grade. You have to go back to 2009, Rodgers’ fifth year in the league and second as a starter, to see him play behind the #20 offensive line.
That year, he played well; he threw for 4,434 yards, 30 touchdowns, and just seven interceptions, with the lowest interception percentage (1.3%) in the league. But he did get sacked a league-leading 50 times.
Now we’ll see if Rodgers, at age 40, looks as good behind a poor-quality offensive line. The consensus between Pro Football Network, Pro Football Focus, and Sharp Football Analysis is that the Jets' o-line ranks between #21 and #24.
The line, which allowed pressure on 7.0% of dropbacks last year, has right tackle Mekhi Becton returning from injury, and they have a rookie second-round pick, Joe Tippmann, coming in at center, but left tackle Duane Brown is turning 38.
Rodgers could make the offensive line look better. He has a good pocket presence, and he can get the ball out quickly. Amongst QBs with over 380 dropbacks last season, Rodgers had the ninth-fastest time from snap to throw—2.67 seconds—and he had a 2.59-second time to throw in 2021.
But he also had a lot of help from quality offensive line play.
The average sack rate across the whole NFL in 2022 was 6.7% (and was close in 2021, 2019, and 2018). The sack rate of the top six teams were lower than Rodgers’ 5.6%.
Digging into the numbers, you can see Rodgers is about average at avoiding sacks when pressured. Over the past three seasons, his pressure-to-sack rate has been between 15.6% and 21.6% on a seasonal basis. The average starting quarterback in the three years of data I have compiled had a pressure-to-sack rate of 18.5% of their pressures turning into sacks. Rodgers’ average during that frame was 19.2%. The numbers paint him as almost perfectly average.
That’s more sacks than Joe Flacco allowed when he played behind the Jets’ offensive line last season in admittedly a much smaller sample size. Flacco only went down 13.0% of the times he was pressured. (Flacco has always been good at getting the ball out and avoiding sacks.)
Zach Wilson, who is making training camp a living hell for Rodgers, suffered a 20.7% sack-to-pressure rate last season, and I have a suspicion that Rodgers is a cooler operator than Wilson.
In the same NY Post article I referenced above (Wilson threw a TD pass!), post reporter Zach Braziller gave a poor review to the Jets’ o-line play:
It was another shaky day for the struggling offensive line. The first team struggled to create a push up front, particularly in the running game. The group is without projected starting left tackle Duane Brown (PUP).
Also worrying on the injury front:
LT Mekhi Becton didn’t practice due to a sore right knee — the same knee that cost him all of last season.
The Jets’ poor offensive line is another question mark to add to the concerns about relying on Rodgers as a fantasy quarterback in 2023. In addition, you have to worry about his age, his ability to transition to a new team, the mediocre receivers behind Garrett Wilson, and the coaching of the Jets (HC is a defensive coordinator, and the offensive coordinator is Nathaniel Hackett). But if he can overcome that, he could be a quality QB2 in superflex leagues.
See my QB rankings for redraft: