The 6 faces of Aaron Rodgers that explain the Packers’ frustrating season

2018 has been a weird and occasionally excruciating season for Green Bay, and it’s written on Rodgers’ face(s).

On Sunday, Aaron Rodgers summed up the Packers’ 2018 season with one motion:

Green Bay has struggled through an uneven start that has seen their Super Bowl hopes reduced to a .500 record over the course of five weeks. The Packers have been sunk by injuries, questionable penalties, and, somehow, the complete dissolution of a veteran placekicker en route to their 2-2-1 start.

And while those problems all have solutions, Rodgers’ frustrated shrug may be the only real answer to the question “is this team still an NFL championship contender?”

Green Bay came into Detroit short-handed and immediately paid for it

Green Bay didn’t have its full array of weapons on hand for Week 5’s NFC North showdown against the Lions. Muhammad Wilkerson went down for the season last Sunday with a broken ankle. Jaire Alexander didn’t dress for the game with a groin injury. Bashaud Breeland hasn’t yet played a game yet after signing with the Packers at the end of September.

But the club’s biggest absences may have come on the offensive side of the ball, where Randall Cobb and Geronimo Allison were both inactives Sunday. The team’s top wideout, Davante Adams, played but was hampered by a calf injury. That pressed rookie late-round picks Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Equanimeous St. Brown into the starting lineup.

And that change didn’t go well. Rodgers spent the first 30 minutes of a blowout loss in Detroit overthrowing receivers who consistently slowed down mid-route and getting chased down by pass rushers who made quick work of a passer who scrambled into open water only to find his cache of young receivers hadn’t scrambled with him.

The first half was 30 minutes of misery for the Packers

You didn’t need to look at the scoreboard to figure out how screwed the Packers were; you could read it on Rodgers’ face. Like here, when he watched Valdes-Scantling make a catch near the sideline and fail to get either foot down inbounds.

Or here, when a slowed-down St. Brown had to watch a potential 30-yard gain sail over his head:

Or here, when Mason Crosby doinked his second of three missed first-half field goals off the right upright.

Or here, after Jimmy Graham allowed a touchdown pass to sail through his fingertips and to the turf:

Or here after...well, I don’t actually remember what happened before this one. Maybe one of Rodgers’ two strip sacks that saw him avoid pressure, roll out of the pocket, and then get pummeled by the Detroit pass rush?

This can’t be good for the Rodgers-McCarthy relationship

Rodgers quarterbacked his team to a 22-0 win over the Bills in Week 4, but still expressed concerns over his team’s playcalling in his postgame comments, even going as far to call his offense “terrible” despite a victory that was never in doubt.

“It was as bad as we’ve played on offense with that many yards in a long time,” said Rodgers.

“We need to find ways to get our playmakers in position to get some more opportunities. Davante [Adams] is a tough cover for anybody. But he should’ve had 20 targets today. They couldn’t stop him. And they dared to play one-high a few times. So we’ve got to find ways to get him involved and Jimmy [Graham] as well.

“It’s by the [game] plan … to find ways to get him in No. 1 spots.”

McCarthy brushed those comments aside a day later.

“I have good relationships, proper relationships, with all of our players,” McCarthy told the media at his weekly press conference. “Aaron and I, we have gone through a lot of years together. So I feel good about our relationship.”

McCarthy also took those comments to heart. Adams put together his finest game of the season in a nine-catch, 140-yard, one-touchdown performance. Graham was targeted 10 times making six catches for 76 yards. The players Rodgers singled out were featured players in the Packer passing game Sunday — though Green Bay wasn’t exactly flush with options thanks to the absence of Cobb and Allison.

Sunday was another strange turn in a bizarre, never-boring Packers season

The bad news for Green Bay is the Packers are 2-2-1 through nearly a third of the season. The good news is there isn’t much that will surprise the club through the rest of 2018.

Week 1 saw a hobbled Aaron Rodgers lead the Pack back from a 20-0 third quarter deficit and deal the NFC North-leading Bears their only defeat of the season so far. Week 2 launched a thousand hot takes on the league’s new roughing the passer rule when Clay Matthews’ game-deciding pressure on Vikings’ quarterback Kirk Cousins turned into a 15-yard penalty and a tie in what looked like a surefire win.

Week 3 was a lackluster defeat against Washington. Week 4 was a blowout win against a Bills team that led to the aforementioned tension between McCarthy and Rodgers. Throughout that span, the team lost contributors like Allison, Cobb, Alexander, and Wilkerson. There’s been no such thing as a calm weekend in Wisconsin this fall.

But the adversity may have peaked in Week 5, where a shredded receiving corps and a veteran kicker’s sudden descent into Chuck Knoblauch-esque yips — Crosby finished his day by missing four field goals and an extra point before finally putting a last-ditch 41-yarder through the uprights — turned a potential win into a tremendously frustrating defeat.

2018 isn’t the first time Rodgers and McCarthy have aired out their differences, but with fate seemingly conspiring against the club, it may be the most frustrating. Rodgers carried an uneven offense, one starting two different rookie wideouts, to 442 passing yards. That wasn’t enough to avoid Green Bay’s third-straight loss to Detroit.

Some of the issues that have the Packers stuck at .500 can be waved away to bad luck, whether due to injuries or fluky play. But there’s a very real flaw that’s made a solid Green Bay team look vulnerable throughout the season. Rodgers and McCarthy are going to have to work together to find a way to shore up those weaknesses — or, at the very least, dial up their offense to high enough heights to fly over them.