#12 - Aaron Rodgers
Aaron Rodgers embodies everything a modern QB should be. He has an incredibly live arm, able to throw 40-yard passes on a straight line with no wiggle and a tight spiral. He is mobile enough to scramble for 1st downs and avoid the rush, while being able to launch those perfect throws from every angle running right or left. By all accounts, Aaron Rodgers is among the most, if not the most, gifted QBs to every play football. He has also had the best statistical start to his career of any QB, with all-time highs for career passer rating (104.1) and TD-INT ratio (257-65) and interception percentage (1.6%). Before this season that saw him have career lows in some of those stats, he also had the NFL all-time record for TD% and was 3rd all-time in completion percentage. Stack all this up, add in two MVP awards and a brilliant Super Bowl run, and the real question should be why isn't Aaron Rodgers higher.
The 2015 season took a little sheen of Rodgers' glittering resume, with a truly off season. Despite playing all 16 games, Rodgers didn't reach 4,000 yards (he got 3,821), barely completed 60% of his passes, and had a passer rating of 92.7, nearly 15 points off his prior career average. Rodgers had the excuse of injuries to his receiving core, an average o-line and running game, but he put a bit of that off performance on himself. The reason Rodgers has had the statistical brilliance he's accomplished is the same that hurt him last year: he is a modern NFL QB.
In today's game, we value efficiency a lot more than we used to. The simple tenant to this is passing is better than running, a fact at this point all teams have more or less accepted. To this, a short pass is better than a handoff, and a sack taken is better than an interception. No QB, with the exception of late-career Brady, has been so reticent to throw interceptions as Aaron Rodgers. Passer rating as a stat overvalues not throwing interceptions (in the stat, a TD is worth less than an interception - which is definitely wrong). It is also a statistic that doesn't factor in sacks at all, which again helps Rodgers look even better by this stat. But this shouldn't turn into a focused examination of passer rating, but it points out how Rodgers used his prodigious skills combined with modern passing theory to master the elements that make him so statistically incredible.
Even if you strip away all the elements of the modern NFL, Rodgers can be hailed as an all-timer based on the more ethereal (the pessimist would say 'subjective') ways of judging QB play. Aaron Rodgers is an incredibly gifted player, who harnesses so much ability in that right arm. His ability to throw on the run will etch him in NFL films clips and haunt dreams of Bears, Vikings and Lions fans for decades to come.
His story is also one of pure America. Consistently undervalued, he was not offered a D-1 scholarship coming out of high school, playing a year at Butte Community College. He was passed up in the draft by numerous teams that needed a QB only to go to a team that had the same starting QB for 13 years. He was wedged into a civic mess with Favre and Ted Thompson politicking their way through the 2008 offseason. Through all this, he worked diligently on his ability, refining his throwing montion, making him this multi-faceted hydra that would dominate the league. He got his shot, ran with it, and created a stable foundation in Green Bay only matched by those in New England and whatever team Peyton Manning was QB-ing.
Aaron Rodgers is, at his peak, probably the best physically gifted QB in the history of the NFL. He probably also has the highest floor of any QB in the history of the NFL. His only real weakness is he takes too many sacks (again, something that has no impact on his pristine passer rating - but in advanced statistics that factor it in make him something of a Top-10 all time player). So much of where Rodgers ends up in that Top-10 will depend on how his prodigous skills age. If 2015 was any indication, there may be a universe where Rodgers is not an efficient hydra, but if that was just a product of personnel losses, the NFL can return to being Aaron Rodgers' world.
