Why Rodgers Thrived in 2019 Border Battles

It was a matchup of two different branches from the same Mike Shanahan tree: Kevin Stefanksi and Gary Kubiak of the Minnesota Vikings versus Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur. On the one side, Stefanski and Kubiak’s old-school approach to the offense. On the other, a newer spin on the offense with more of an emphasis on shotgun formations and playing to the quarterback’s comfort zone in quick-game passing while still being rooted in the under-center, zone-running, play-action structure of the Shanahan offense.

Updated or not, the two offensive staffs should still be plenty familiar with each other’s systems. Their respective defensive staffs should be familiar with them, as well, given they practice against it in some capacity every day. And yet, when the two sides faced off last year, the Vikings’ passing offense capitulated, while the Packers’ passing offense was functional, if somewhat lackluster. Green Bay swept Minnesota with 21-16 and 23-10 victories.



The easy answer as to how this happened is that Aaron Rodgers is simply a better quarterback than Kirk Cousins. There is an argument to be made in that respect, and it is one I would make in subjectivity, but the numbers did not really bear that out last season. In each of the quarterbacks’ games not against each other, Cousins was significantly more productive.

In 13 non-Green Bay games (Cousins sat out Week 17), Cousins earned 1,003 passing DYAR (defense-adjusted yards above replacement) according to Football Outsiders, averaging about 77.15 DYAR per game. He was a well-above average, if not great, quarterback anytime the opposition was not wearing green and yellow. Rodgers, on the other hand, earned 759 passing DYAR, putting his 54.2 DYAR per game well below Cousins’ mark. Rodgers’ 54.2 non-Minnesota DYAR average was still plenty good in relation to the average quarterback, but pales when compared to Cousins’ non-Green Bay figures.

So despite Cousins being more productive on the whole and both coaching staffs being familiar with each others’ offenses, how exactly did Cousins and the Vikings implode, but Rodgers and the Packers did not? In the first installment of this two-part series, we will examine Rodgers vs. the Minnesota defense.

In all, the Packers’ offense skated by primarily because of one excellent half of exploitation of the Vikings’ two-high vs. one-high structures and Rodgers keeping his mistakes to a minimum. After those first two quarters of the first game, all the Packers offense really did was float along. With as spectacularly as the Vikings’ offense tried sinking itself, however, especially in the second game, merely staying afloat was all Rodgers needed to do for his offense.

The next installment of this series will walk through what went wrong with Cousins versus the Packers defense. By a number of measures, those two games were his worst of the season by far, and the film shows just how much the Packers did to keep Cousins down.