If you watched last night’s barbecue of Kansas City at Lambeau in a 38-28 Packers victory that wasn’t as close as the final score suggests, you likely got the takeaway that Aaron Rodgers is rightly the defending NFL MVP, tossing five touchdowns–several of those against a choice foe of Peyton Manning’s in Marcus Cooper.
But the metrics of Pro Football Focus paint a different picture, as the title of this thread suggests. Knowing that this would be a controversial finding, PFF wrote an article explaining this grade. The core of the explanation comes down to two arguments:
- Three of Rodgers’s five TDs passes were judged to be the result of exceptional play by Randall Cobb instead of by Rodgers.
- Rodgers earned two negative plays with a fumble lost (but it was nullified by a Chiefs penalty) and a dropped interception to Josh Mauga that, in their judgment, possibly should have been a pick six.
I’m going to reserve my own comment until a possible later time to think over the arguments and counter-arguments (and suffice to say, there are plenty of the latter). In the meantime, if you’re looking for something from PFF that satisfies your Broncos fandom, I would recommend this article that explains the perpetual ceiling that the Chiefs will have with Alex Smith as their starter.