The final stats are in, and they prove the narrative right: Aaron Rodgers didn’t have much help in the receivers department.
When the Green Bay Packers traded Davante Adams to the Las Vegas Raiders last offseason, the primary question left to answer was: Who will Aaron Rodgers throw the ball to? The answer, apparently: No one.
Adams had tallied 900 or more receiving yards for the Packers in four of the past six seasons and was definitively Rodgers’ WR1.
Advanced passing stats for the year, per Pro Football Reference, show just how much Rodgers and the Packers struggled on the passing front, but they help show exactly who was at fault, and it’s not Rodgers. Zach Kruse Tweeted some of the stats. Rodgers was second in on-target percentage (first: Daniel Jones) and second in passes dropped percentage (first: Lamar Jackson; and his 40 total drops were at the top of the leaderboard).
It paints a very bleak picture of the weapons Rodgers had and explains why 2022 was his worst raw passing yards year since 2017 when he played just seven games.
Packers receivers didn’t help Aaron Rodgers, but neither did play-calling
The Packers receiving corps and the talent placed around him did him no favors, but the play-calling didn’t either. Despite the lack of talent, the Packers didn’t lean on their run game much, even though it was working.
Rodgers ranked 10th in the NFL in passes attempted and were middle of the league in run plays. Aaron Jones’s rushing attempts increased slightly compared to 2021, but were not close to his 14+ attempts per game in 2019 and 2020.
Early in the season, they refused to deploy Jones in situations where a few easy yards would be important, instead opting to pass despite limited resources on that front.
One thing is for certain, if the Packers hope to move forward with Rodgers, it’s key that they fix the unsolved issue of the receiving talent around Rodgers. Clearly, the playbook isn’t up for changing.