Aaron Rodgers will almost certainly win his fourth NFL MVP award in a couple of weeks, but he won’t be preparing to play a football game when he receives the award — he’ll be contemplating his future, both in the game and in Green Bay, after he played one of the worst playoff games of his decorated career and dipped out of the postseason in the divisional round with nothing more than a whimper.
The box score numbers from Saturday’s 13-10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers weren’t shockingly bad; Rodgers completed 20 of 29 passes for 225 yards, zero touchdowns and zero interceptions. But the expected MVP came up shockingly small to open what was imagined to be a defining stretch of playoff games both for his legacy in the sport and as the quarterback of the Packers in a place called “Titletown.”
Instead, Rodgers managed just two scoring drives in 10 possessions and only three total points in three-and-a-half quarters after leading the Packers to an opening drive touchdown, and his team — the top seed in the NFC for the second straight year — exited the playoffs in the divisional round, well short of the Super Bowl.
