Written by Rob Demovsky at ESPN.com
Here’s a game of NFL fill in the blank: Aaron Rodgers is the best quarterback when it comes to ____.
(A) Staying alive in the pocket for eight seconds to throw touchdown passes
(B) Throwing Hail Marys
(C) Hitting receivers in stride through tight windows
In Sunday’s 38-13 NFC wild-card win over the New York Giants, the correct answer was actually: (D) All of the above.
And it’s why the top-seeded Dallas Cowboys should beware when Rodgers brings the Green Bay Packers to AT&T Stadium for next Sunday’s NFC divisional-round game.
“He’s in a zone unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before,” Packers receiver Davante Adams said. “I’m not sure that other quarterbacks around the league can even challenge that. It’s just a matter of when he turns it on, we’ve got to match that.”
Rodgers did all of that, and then some, in the Packers’ victory at Lambeau Field. He threw for 362 yards and four touchdowns, making him the only quarterback in team history with a pair of four-touchdown playoff games.
It came after the Packers were largely inept early on. They punted on their first five possessions. The last playoff team that did that was the Chicago Bears in the 2010 NFC Championship Game, which the Packers won.
And then Rodgers came alive.
In a touchdown pass reminiscent of the one he threw the week before in Detroit– where he dodged pass-rushers for more than eight seconds and hit Geronimo Allison in the end zone — Rodgers pulled it off again for the Packers’ first score, a 5-yarder to Adams (who had eight catches for 125 yards). It was just the third touchdown pass of this entire NFL season in which a passer took at least eight seconds to throw. Rodgers, of course, has two of them.
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