How the Broncos can make Aaron Rodgers "be a normal human and not Superman"

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – How you view Aaron Rodgers from an opponent’s perspective depends on how often you’ve seen him.

Broncos cornerback Chris Harris Jr. has seen him twice. The first time, in 2011, he was a backup who watched as Rodgers diced up the Broncos for 408 yards and four touchdowns on 29-of-38 passing. Not even an interception kept his rating from spiking to 134.5 in the game. The second time, in 2015, Harris and the defense used a perfect rush-and-cover strategy to neutralize Rodgers, holding him to a meager 77 yards on 14-of-22 passing.

Today, the Broncos’ situation bears closer resemblance to 2011 than 2015. In Harris’ first game against Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, they entered the game 1-2 and left 1-3 with a 49-23 shellacking. Four years later, both the Broncos and Packers entered a Week 8 showdown undefeated, and Denver remained unblemished with a 29-10 win that, in terms of pure dominance, was the high point of their world-championship season.

“We were able to play man-to-man and bring the heat every time,” Harris said of the defense’s performance in 2015. “We can’t do that. It’s hard to do that now.”

Broncos head coach Vic Fangio, meanwhile, has seen the gamut of situations against Rodgers and the Packers. As the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, he helped his team to a pair of playoff wins over the Packers in back-to-back seasons (2012 and 2013).

As Chicago’s defensive coordinator, he saw his defense chopped up by Rodgers in his first game on the job – a surgical 18-of-23, 189-yard, three-touchdown performance to open the 2015 season – and then supervised a turnabout 11 weeks later, holding him to a 62.4 rating as the Bears upset Green Bay, 17-13 at Lambeau Field.

Rodgers would give the Bears fits, and the Packers won four consecutive games with Rodgers starting against Fangio and the Bears. Chicago snapped the steak with a 24-17 win last December.

“We just have to try and make him be a normal human and not Superman — that he can be many times,” Fangio told Wisconsin media in his conference call earlier this week.

That’s no big deal — just as long as you can find some kryptonite.

PRESSURE IS A START

Still, Rodgers is different than he was in previous meetings. While he remains mobile and capable of extending plays, injuries and age have robbed him of some of his nimbleness.

That, along with a transition to a new offensive scheme installed by first-time head coach Matt LaFleur, has led to some bumps. While Rodgers remains accurate, he’s also been under pressure, absorbing 16 hits over the last two games. Only the Texans and Dolphins allowed their quarterbacks to be hit more in Weeks 1 and 2.

“They’re just collapsing the pocket on him,” Broncos outside linebacker Bradley Chubb said. “Like I said earlier, Aaron is one of those guys that can make plays with his feet and likes to let routes develop downfield while he’s running around and doing all this and that. I feel like the other teams have just been collapsing that pocket, not letting him get out of the pocket and running around and they do that.

“He’s still a great quarterback when he’s in the pocket, but [the scheme] is just not the same. It’s not receivers running 50 yards down the field and stuff like that. That’s our main goal, just keep him in the pocket and allow our coverage to be there and hopefully we get there for the sack.”

One thing that hasn’t changed with the new scheme is Rodgers’ continued emphasis on avoiding giveaways. During the 2018 season, Rodgers threw two interceptions, the lowest total of any season in which he started at least one game. His interception percentage of 0.3 led the NFL.

He also threw away the football more often than at any point in his career – usually when he was under pressure. His completion percentage dipped from 64.7 in 2017 to 62.8 last year.

Still, what the Broncos need is for pressure to lead to a sack and a giveaway. The former hasn’t been hard to find against Green Bay. The latter is something different, and it’s why one play from Fangio’s defense last year is worth examining.

HOW FANGIO’S D PICKED OFF RODGERS

Rodgers has thrown just one interception in his last 14 games — a span that covers 535 attempts.

Fangio’s defense is responsible for it.

First, note the game situation: 3:14 remaining in the fourth quarter of the Bears’ game against Green Bay last December. Chicago led 24-14, and the Packers had third-and-goal from the Chicago 9-yard line. A field goal would have been helpful in that scenario, but a touchdown was what Rodgers and the Packers wanted.

At the snap, Bears edge rusher Khalil Mack is aligned against tight end Jimmy Graham, operating away from the tackle as a “joker” tight end. Mack gives the impression that he will be covering Graham, leaving a three-man rush to attack Rodgers.

Then he stops and passes Graham off to Roquan Smith, leaving Mack to rush Rodgers. At this point, Mack is a non-factor in the play as long as Rodgers gets the ball off quickly, which is his plan.

But the Smith-on-Graham matchup is considerably less favorable to Rodgers than the Mack-on-Graham pairing would have been. With Smith in tight coverage, Rodgers quickly glances away to try and deceive the safeties in the end zone before firing to Rodgers at the goal line.

Even though safety Eddie Jackson isn’t involved in coverage on Graham at the time of the snap, his discipline becomes crucial when Smith deflects the pass as it arrives for Graham. The ball bounces up, and Jackson has an easy end-zone interception that ends Green Bay’s threat.

The discipline of the safeties and the brief disguise of coverage at the snap are both essential to Fangio’s scheme.

Obviously, it works better in a situation in which the quarterback is forced to throw, as was the case for Rodgers with a two-score deficit and the clock draining of precious seconds. But it offers an instructive lesson of what the Broncos can do to generate a game-changing turnover that has become exceptionally rare for Green Bay’s offense.

It also forced Rodgers to throw between the hash marks — offering the best chance at a takeaway from Rodgers, whose placement on passes down the sideline and outside the numbers makes interceptions a near-impossibility.

“Any defensive package has multiple ways of playing different coverages, different fronts, different personnel groups,” Fangio said. “We can do that. It shouldn’t be a problem for our guys.”

If it is, the Broncos’ quest for takeaways might be on hold for yet another week – and their victory drought is likely to continue.