Green Bay Packers: Limiting Aaron Rodgers is the right move

The Green Bay Packers have barely seen Aaron Rodgers on the field this preseason, but they don’t need to though. Limiting injury risk is the right move.

Week 3 of the NFL preseason is seen as the dress rehearsal. Teams give their starters most of the playing time as a tune-up for the regular season. Then Week 4 is more of a rest week to make sure everyone’s healthy. The Green Bay Packers decided some players don’t need tune-ups, though. By some players, I mean Aaron Rodgers — and it was the right move.

Rodgers threw five passes in Week 3 of the preseason. In Week 2, he threw eight. Meanwhile, the superstar quarterback didn’t even see the field in Week 1. The NFL preseason has a lot of functions. One of them is to get the players ready for the regular season.

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Is this really necessary for someone with 297 touchdowns and 72 interceptions in his career, though?

Sure, you could say that players need to be reintroduced to the speed of the game every year, but that’s about it. Rodgers took some snaps and looked perfectly fine. There’s no reason to give him an extra 10 pass attempts if you’re already happy with what you saw.

In the end, is Rodgers really going to benefit from one or two more quarters of preseason football? The man’s thrown 4,657 passes in his NFL career. That’s just the regular season too. At this point in his career, the preseason is going to do more damage to Rodgers than anything. Keeping him in only increases his chance of getting injured — nothing else.

So while so fans may want to see Rodgers get more reps with his offense and get synced up, it seems more like an unnecessary risk. The preseason is a great way to evaluate talent. It can also help get players acclimated to one another and back into midseason form.

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With all that in mind, there’s still plenty for the Packers to do. Make sure Aaron Rodgers has the best possible talent around him. Make sure his targets have their routes down, and his blockers are ready to go. We already know what Rodgers is.