Vic Beasley Jr. and the Falcons’ defenders have been down this road before, chasing Aaron Rodgers fruitlessly often enough to know Wile E. Coyote’s feelings in the Roadrunner’s dust, but Sunday’s rematch is a shot at a sort of atonement.
The Packers bring a colossal challenge into the NFC Championship game, with Rodgers playing quarterback as if he’s in a video game that he invented and his knack for making plays out of the pocket perhaps at an all-time high.
Yes, the Falcons squeaked by Green Bay 33-32 in Game 8, yet it wasn’t because the Birds bottled up Rodgers. At times, he drove them batty, completing 28 of 38 passes for 246 yards and four touchdowns, with no picks.
Three of those scoring plays came when the 12-year veteran quarterback slipped the pocket, and they don’t even count the six times he rushed for a game-high 60 yards or the two-point conversion he scored.
So, when the NFL’s sack leader said, “We’ve got to be disciplined in our rushes, and precise,” Beasley wasn’t kidding. In rushing the Packers’ quarterback, “We don’t want to get too high on Aaron Rodgers because he’ll make you pay for it in the back end.”
That’s almost a guarantee.
Rodgers has completed 14 of 17 passes from outside the pocket in two playoff games for 220 yards, which is more efficient than his numbers in the pocket. All other NFL quarterbacks combined are 19-of-46 for 200 yards outside the “comfort zone.”
The Falcons sacked Green Bay’s quarterback three times in the previous meeting, and he’ll probably be dropped a few times Sunday, but in some ways, the goals change against Rodgers. Where most NFL teams set out to “move a quarterback off his spot” when trying to pass with the best outcome being a sack, moving Rodgers can be like trying to blow away an odor. It’s still going to stink.
Blitz him too much, and he’ll find open receivers for big plays. Zone him, and he’ll have more time as fewer rushers will be in the mix. Go man-to-man, and when he sees the backs of linebackers and defensive backs, he’s more likely to run because they won’t be looking at him while they’re going the other direction.
“That’s always a hard thing for mobile quarterbacks: how do you get to them?” Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. “How do you move them? How do you take care of him when he’s outside the pocket? Inside the pocket? It’s been at the front of our thinking all week.”
If the Falcons over-commit to hemming Rodgers in to where they are conservative in rushes with the idea of not collapsing the pocket so hard as not to leave an angle for him to scramble, that hesitancy could leave more time.
“It’s not like we’re facing our first mobile quarterback,” defensive coordinator Richard Smith said. “We’ve played this style of offense. We’re fully prepared for this. … Nobody has kept him in the pocket, and hopefully when he gets out of the pocket we’ll be able to run him down.”
When the up-front Falcons are chasing Rodgers, and he’s zigging and zagging inside and outside of the pocket, the secondary has to “plaster” receivers longer.
“It gets frustrating at times,” cornerback Robert Alford said, “but you’ve got to depend on your brothers on the D-line that they’re going to get there and get the quarterback tackled.”
The Falcons may occasionally “spy” Rodgers, perhaps with a speedy linebacker like Deion Jones or De’Vondre Campbell or even a back.
Shadowing him with a defender whose assignment is to keep the quarterback from breaking loose, however, all but takes that defender out of coverage or the pass rush.
That plan may be more effective with running quarterbacks who are more of a threat to run for sake of gaining yardage as opposed to buying time to throw.
“In my experience … it’s not just one thing to take care of unique players,” Quinn said. “At the end, it still comes down to your get-off (when the ball is snapped), your strain, your technique and you want to make sure you’re in concert with the other guys.
“We try to simulate it as best we can in practice. It’s a hard play to simulate. He’s one of the very best there is at it.”
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