Thursday, December 26, 2013

Belated Merry Christmas! Aaron Rodgers Will Start On Sunday

Aaron Schatz reminded all Packer fans that it'll still be a very competitive game on Sunday because the Packers's defense stinks, especially without LB Clay Matthews, but this is obviously good news.
QB Matt Flynn has been good at times over the past five games, but even Rodgers at his worst is better. With a DYAR of -41 and an ESPN QBR of 6.4 against the Steelers, Flynn has now had his third bad start of the year (for the Packers) to go along with two very good games against the Vikings and Cowboys. Flynn's QBR for the season is now 19.4 (including his one start for the Raiders) and he's been in the single digits in three of his six starts.

On the other hand, Rodgers is the usually excellent QB you expect. Using ESPN's QBR, his lowest grades of the season came against the Bengals and Ravens (33.3 and 34.3) and his season average is 70.3. Flynn's only had a higher QBR in one game this season (74.5 QBR against the Vikings).

Rodgers will be shaking off some rust against the Bears, but that hasn't been a problem in the past. Back in 2010, he missed a game due to a concussion and when he returned against the Giants he threw for 404 yards and 4 touchdowns. In his second game back, the last regular season game of that season (and it was against the Bears) he threw for 229 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception (ESPN QBR of 31.7). That was obviously not his best game, but the Bears defense was a lot, lot better back then and a QBR of 31.7 would still be better than Flynn's had in two of his four starts for the Packers this season. And statistically, Rodgers was about the same during the regular season in 2010 as he's been so far in 2013.

As cautious as they've been with him over the past few weeks, it seems very unlikely that they're risking a more serious injury by starting him. And his return, obviously, will make a huge difference on Sunday.

1 comment:

Jack Niemuth said...

Are you on the "Packers are gonna win the NFC North" bandwagon yet Brandon?