Aaron Rodgers may have played his final game on Monday night as the Steelers lost to the Texans in the wild-card round. If Rodgers does retire that means his legendary run will have ended in extreme irony as the final pass of his Hall of Fame career was not just an interception, but a pick-six. The only postseason pick-six he has ever thrown.
According to Pro Football Reference, Rodgers threw just six pick-sixes in his career. Brett Favre and Matthew Stafford are currently tied for the most pick-sixes with 32 each. Dan Marino is third on the list with 29. Peyton Manning and Drew Brees each threw 27. Eli Manning threw 22. Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady both threw 18.
Not only is it extremely rare for Rodgers to throw a pick-six, just seeing a defender catch the ball is extremely uncommon. While he's fourth on the NFL's all-time touchdown passes list with 527 (just 12 behind Peyton Manning.), he's tied for 90th all-time in interceptions with 123 in 264 games.
Brady, the NFL's all-time leader in touchdown passes with 649, threw 212 interceptions in 335 games.
Rodgers has the all-time best touchdown-to-interception ratio at 4.28 touchdowns to every one interception. That's almost a full touchdown better than No. 2 on the list, Lamar Jackson. Brady sits at No. 6 with 3.03 touchdowns to every interception.
Rodgers is No. 25 on the all-time fumbles list, well behind Favre, John Elway, Brady and a number of other Hall of Famers and contemporaries. But when it comes to throwing the ball, no one ever took greater care of it than Rodgers despite the fact that he's No. 6 on the all-time pass attempts list. You simply did not pick off Aaron Rodgers.
There were 16 years where Rodgers started the majority of the games for his team. In those 16 years he threw double-digit interceptions just four times.
At his peak, from 2011 to 2021 Rodgers started 159 games, threw 362 touchdown passes and just 61 interceptions. So over an 11-year stretch his touchdown to interception ratio was 6:1.
Even over the last three full seasons he's played he's thrown 78 touchdowns to 30 interceptions in 50 games. This was Rodgers at his worst on teams that were not great and he was still giving you 2.5 touchdowns to every interception.
That's why it's worth noting that his likely last pass for the Steelers was a pick-six. And stranger still, his final interception of his time with the Packers was an interception as well as Detroit's Kerby Joseph intercepted Rodgers in the final minutes of a 20-16 Lions win that kept the Packers out of the playoffs and ended the Rodgers era in Green Bay.
In one final twist, his final pass at his least successful stop was a touchdown. You may have blocked it out, but Rodgers really did end his time with the New York Jets by throwing four touchdowns, including one to Breece Hall on his final pass of the season to clinch a win over the Dolphins.
Now he's left with the possibility of ending his career on not just an interception, but a pick-six. Who could have seen that coming?
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Aaron Rodgers's Career Ending on a Pick-Six Would Be Least-Likely Outcome Possible.
