It was not a happy birthday for Rodgers

Was this the worst game of Rodgers’s career? He had a game where he averaged 0.00 yards per attempt on one pass, but I don’t think you want to count that. He averaged 2.67 yards/attempt is a game against the Patriots in 2006, but he didn’t start the game and he threw just 12 passes. Maybe you prefer the 22-pass game against the 2015 Broncos as the worst Y/A game of his career, since he picked up just 3.5 yards per pass. Then again, there’s also this game against the Bills in 2014, where he averaged 4.4 yards per attempt on 42 passes; that feels even worse than the Denver game.

Because of the large variance in pass attempts, it’s hard to figure out what’s the worst Y/A game of a player’s career. But here’s one method I like: if you remove game X from a player’s career, how much does his career Y/A change? The game that causes the biggest change could be considered the best or worst game of that player’s career.

And by this methodology, the game against the Cardinals yesterday was in fact the worst game of Rodgers’s career. His career yards/attempt average is 7.840. Remove the game where he threw 1 pass for 0 yards, and his career Y/A is 7.841.  If instead you removed the 12-pass Patriots game, Rodgers’s career average would be 7.851.  If you instead removed the Denver game, his career average would be 7.858.  If the one game from Rodgers’s career you had to remove was that Bills game, his career Y/A would rise to 7.867.

But if you want to get his career Y/A average to 7.87, then you need to take out yesterday’s game.  That’s the game that has lowered his career average the most.  Take a look:

On the flip side, what is the one game of his career that has helped his career average the most? Rodgers averaged 11.43 yards/attempt against the 2013 Redskins; that ranks as the 5th best game of Rodgers’s career in terms of yards/attempt (minimum 14 attempts), but because of his 42 passes, it’s the most meaningful of his career. That game is the 4th-best game since 1950, in terms of yards per attempt, among players with 40+ passes. Here are the best 20 games of Rodgers’s career, in terms of boosting his career Y/A average:

The Packers fired Mike McCarthy after the game, only head coach Rodgers has ever known.  Green Bay has a pair of iconic coaches in franchise history in Curly Lambeau and Vince Lombardi, and Mike Holmgren is a borderline HOF coach who won 67% of his games in Green Bay.  But McCarthy won a Super Bowl, too, and leaves the Packers as the clear 4th-best coach in franchise history.  He won 10 playoff games, the most of any Packers coach, and had a winning playoff record.    The last two seasons were bad, but McCarthy’s Packers made the postseason the prior 8 years.  That’s an impressive run, especially since he got the job on the heels of coordinating the worst offense in the NFL.

Making this all the more remarkable is that the Packers run defense was bad last season, ranking in the bottom half of the league in both rushing yards and rushing touchdowns, and 29th in yards per carry. From a snap count perspective, LB Nick Perry (76%), LB Jake Ryan (73%), DT Mike Daniels (64%), and LB Blake Martinez (52%) are the only front seven defenders to have appeared in at least 50% of the team’s plays! In other words, it’s not like guys like Clay Matthews (47%) and Julius Peppers (44%) are having monster seasons.

Frankly, I haven’t watched enough of the Packers defense to weigh in on what’s going on — I don’t know if Perry or Ryan is having a breakout season.  So instead, here’s what I’ll do.  The graph below shows the percentage of running plays against the Packers that have gone for X yards, and also against the rest of the NFL.  Here’s the key: the Packers have been incredible at dropping opposing carries for a loss (28%) compared to the rest of the NFL (13%).  Meanwhile, 11% of all runs against the other 31 teams have gone for at least 10+ yards, compared to just two percent of all runs for the Packers (with a long of just 14 yards).

So what’s the takeaway? Does this graph make you think the Packers’ run defense success is more or less fluky (given that there’s always a large amount of flukiness present in such an outlier result)?