Aaron Rodgers clearly wasn’t himself in the second half of last night’s loss to the Saints.
But the Packers quarterback wasn’t making any excuses for himself either.
Some degree of hamstring issue left Rodgers limping slightly but noticeably after the 44-23 loss, but he insisted it wasn’t an issue.
“I’m not going to miss any time,” Rodgers said, via Jason Wilde of ESPNWisconsin.com. “If I felt it, then I had to back off a little bit. We had to do a little more in the shotgun but it wasn’t a big deal, ultimately.”
Apparently it was. His passer rating before the whatever-it-was was 133.1. After, it was 45.8, with a pair of interceptions which weren’t entirely the fault of his legs. And any element of him moving, the way he did when he scrambled for a first down, was gone.
“I think it was obvious just the way we played from that point on. We kept him in the ‘gun, and really our whole play-action and QB-movement package was gone,” coach Mike McCarthy said. “I thought he played smart and didn’t really open it up to put himself in jeopardy for future injury, further injury.”
Rodgers didn’t even want to call it a hamstring pull, and said he felt like he could still play.
“It was, ‘Continue playing.’ As long as I could hold up, I felt like I could and was able to run one in there somehow,” he said. “If it would’ve been real detrimental to my health for the season, I probably would have told Coach to take me out. But I felt like I could still go.”
The good news is he has a bye week to recover, but he’ll probably spend more time on R-E-H-A-B than he will resting by the pool to get himself well again.
