The NFL is loaded with studs at QB. The core group of top guys stay the same for the most part, but every year the props-pendulum swings and some drop a notch, while others elevate.
Before Aaron Rodgers ascended to the top of the QB heap in 2010 by leading Green Bay to a win in Super Bowl XLV, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning set the standard for QB-dopeness.
That season, however, Rodgers emerged as the NFL’s top signal-caller, and the three-time Pro Bowl QB’s been expanding his lead ever since.
“There's been so many great ones," former Chicago Bears coach and TV football analyst Mike Ditka wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times. "But if I had to coach one guy in my career, maybe it'd be Aaron Rodgers…I look at guys like Brady and (Drew) Brees…the talent is phenomenal. The guy up in Green Bay, I think is the best in football.”
Rodgers’ accuracy, mobility, arm strength and leadership is on par with any of the all-time greats. He’s entering his ninth NFL season and will turn just 30 in December. He flosses the top career passer rating in NFL history (104.9) and he’s not dinking and dunking. The former Cal-Berkeley star racks up 4,000-yard seasons like it’s nothing, and he’s done the best job replacing a legend since Steve Young took over for Joe Montana and went on to have a Hall of Fame career with the 49ers.
In measuring the impact Rodgers has had on Packers Nation, rewind to Brett Favre’s last two years in the league (2008-2010). He was a media darling who was constantly lauded and discussed on social networks and sports programs. The NFL community didn’t want to let Favre ride off into the sunset with his ten gallon hat, rugged skinny jeans and cowboy boots, and there’s always a GM of a bad team looking to sign a washed-up legend with gate attraction
When Rodgers grabbed that Lombardi joint, it changed everything – like he was an artist that just went diamond. It might be blasphemous to say this in Cheese Town, USA, but Rodgers is better than Favre ever was already.
Then again, nobody’s probably even talking about Brett Favre anymore in Green Bay.
To just be mentioned in the same breath as Brady and Manning is orgasmic for QBs. Just ask two-time Super Bowl champ Eli Manning or Matt Ryan or Joe Flacco how they’d like a mention amongst the legends. Rodgers is already there and in his QB prime, while his elite brethren are preparing for Hall of Fame retirement. When that happens, they won’t be able to do anything but sit back and watch Rodgers hunt down their records. Helpless, like all those defenses he wears out on Sundays.
