Hanky, some thoughts here? Still hoping that your prediction will be "right" before Rodgers gets his AARP card?

The funniest part about the Aaron Rodgers slander (to me) is that it was sparked by a clickbaity article by ESPN that a ton of morons treated like gospel without even seriously considering it. ESPN still does some good longform work but their rankings and metrics (QBR, FPI, BPI, etc.) are hot garbage.

That was the same article (or same time period) that ESPN was claiming that Russell Wilson was a top 3 QB. Wilson is a hell of a player who's been underrated through his career, but there is no reasonable metric that has him as a better QB than Rodgers. They both have the same biggest strength (passing efficiency) but they get there in different ways. Aaron is the most efficient passer in the history of the NFL despite routinely leading the league in throwaways and going his entire career so far without the Packers drafting him a 1st round WR. On the other side, Wilson is second in career passer rating behind Aaron, but that's while leading the league in sacks taken compared to Aaron who was 5th lowest in sacks taken for QBs who started all 16 games last year. Those are both ways to avoid turnovers, but for Aaron to lead the league in throwaways and also lead the league in passing efficiency is unbelievable since they usually work against each other --all without giving up sacks.

Aaron also has never had the same type of defensive support (which has a positive correlation to passing efficiency) that Russ has had through most of his career. There have been some solid Packers defenses but none as dominant or sustained as the Seahawks Super Bowl winning Defenses, Rodgers also has never had a RB as good as Marshawn to work with.

Over the last couple seasons (since they dismantled the 'legion of boom') the Seahawks have reorganized their team and put the bulk of the responsibility on Russ' shoulders and he's responded impressively. But Aaron has been carrying his team for years with much less organizational and coaching support. In case anyone's getting the wrong idea, the point of this post isn't to trash an elite QB in Russell Wilson, it's just to say that at this point in time there's no reason that Russ should be seen as a top 5 QB but Aaron isn't.

last note: ESPN is the same folks who just put out a laughable 'Aaron Donald is a bad run defender' hot take even though AD led the league in TFLs each of the last two seasons. As some football analytics people pointed out: if your metric spits out ridiculous results, you should re-examine and fix it instead of doing mental gymnastics to try and substantiate an unsupportable claim