Four games into the season after win over the Steelers, Rodgers and the Packers still looking more like the 2019 team than the 2020 team

 

The Packers faced a Steelers team this week that has seen better days, with Ben Roethlisberger still hanging on in his 18^th season in league, but with two more Super Bowl appearances than you-know-who.  The Packers prevailing 27-17 was an expected result, since they are supposedly a Super Bowl contender, and the 1-3 Steelers definitely are not at this point. Aaron Rodgers had a serviceable game, at least insofar as he was “consistent”—meaning he didn’t play noticeably better or worse in either half of play. At this point he looks more like the 2019 version than the 2020 MVP version, and that may be just good enough. The running game has improved considerably since the opener, and the defense is currently sixth in the league in yards allowed, although the 25 points per game allowed is in the bottom half, and the team still has a minus-5 differential in points scored despite a 3-1 record.

Last year after four games, Rodgers threw for 1214 yards and 13 touchdowns, with the QB rating of 128.4; the Packers were clearly dominant on offense, scoring 152 points. This year after four games, with largely the same offensive weapons, he has thrown for 897 yards and 8 touchdowns, with a QB rating of 100.8, which might sound good, but thus far this season is only good enough to get Rodgers into about 15^th best in the league. The Packers have scored 95 points through four games, which is 2018 and 2019-type numbers.  If the defense plays as opportunistically as it did in 2019, which allowed the Packers a third best plus-12 turnover differential, the team should keep scoring just more points than the opposition in most games. Despite winning ten more games than they lost in 2019, the Packers only averaged less than four points a game more than their opponents, meaning a play here and there spelled the difference between 13-3 and 2018’s  6-9-1 record.

So far this season the main issue still seems to be the offensive line, since Rodgers apparently responded to some of the snickering about his personnel “input” when Randall Cobb finally saw some input in the offense, catching five passes, including 2 for touchdowns (although he blew a possible big play being greedy on a pass intended for Davante Adams).  The line seemed to have improved over the previous two games, but against the Steelers it allowed three sacks, eight quarterback hits and four tackles for losses. David Bakhtiari is still on the “physically unable to perform” list, which he is required to remain on for six games.

The Packers face the 3-1 Bengals next on the road, Quarterback Joe Burrow appears to be more consistent at the position than Andy Dalton ever was, so this is hardly a gimme game.