Whether it is baseball or hockey, football or basketball, professional sports are built upon stars. Purists talk about the name on the front of the jersey over the name on the back of the jersey, there is no “I” in team and contributing to the greater good. But like it or not, stars sell tickets and most often win championships. There is no more single position in all of sports that contributes to a team’s ability to win than the quarterback in the NFL. QB1 is easily the most valued position in the entire sport, yet QB2 seems to be one of the least prioritized.
The Green Bay Packers had an up and down season up until the point when Aaron Rodgers went down to injury, in what appears at this point to be a season-ender. With him being ruled out of Sunday’s game, logic may dictate that we’ve seen the last of Rodgers this season. So Green Bay will push forward this season with their fourth starting quarterback in Matt Flynn, in his second stint with the Packers.
Despite the early season ups and downs, Green Bay was sitting at 5-2 with a favourable schedule ahead when Rodgers went down. They looked poised to return to the playoffs and give teams like Seattle, New Orleans and San Francisco a run for their money.
With the untimely and unfortunate injury to Aaron Rodgers, the season went up in flames.
Let’s be clear, no quarterback is coming in and replacing Aaron Rodgers. But you would hope that a team as talented as the Packers would have a second option that could come in and at least run at or near .500 in order to keep the Packers playoff hopes on track. Entering the playoffs as a low seed has not been an issue for the Packers in recent years, case in point their recent Super Bowl win.
But Green Bay, much like almost every other team in the NFL, seems to place very little value on their back-up quarterback position. The Philadelphia Eagles have had some struggles at the quarterback position this year through inconsistent play and the injury bug. With two competent quarterbacks in the fold, the team has continued to push forward in a less than impressive division.
The parallel that I feel can be drawn here is the back-up goaltender in the NHL. The back-up goaltender rarely starts but needs to be ready to go at any time. You want your back-up goaltender to be ready to go on the drop of a dime and have the mental toughness to overcome some of the adversity that is not asked of the number one option. The NHL seems to do a better job on balancing this than the NFL does with their back-up options.
In the NFL, Matt Cassell comes to mind as the rare exception. You could argue that it benefited Cassell that Brady went down to injury in Week 1 of the 2008 NFL season, enabling the back-up who was fresh out of the pre-season to approach the season knowing he was the number one option. That’s not to discredit or minimize his accomplishments on the year. As a back-up, leading your team to the playoffs is no small feat. When you look at how the Packers have crumbled this year in the absence of Rodgers, the feat becomes even more impressive.
I understand the NFL is a salary cap league. There is only so much money to go around filling out large rosters. But with so much on the line and in a sport where you have 300lb men running like a freight train at your quarterback, having an option to fall back on seems to be only logical.
Yet so many teams simply go all-in with the number one option, simply crossing their fingers and hoping it doesn’t come up.
As a Packers fan, how do you feel about the decision to cut Vince Young? The team is a late fourth quarter comeback resulting in a tie away from being able to say it could not have possibly gone any worse since Rodgers went down to injury.
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