Aaron Rodgers will have his say in NFC Championship Game

The Green Bay Packers are in an unfamiliar position. Underdog.

Since 1992, the Packers have had Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers under center. When those two are your quarterbacks, the opportunity to get points from Vegas will be rare. This Sunday is such a moment, with the San Francisco 49ers laying 7.5 points to the Packers in the NFC Championship Game.

The 49ers deserve to be favorites, they’re the better team. Aaron Rodgers is going to have a few chances to prove that number a mistake. Both things are true.

Rodgers wasn’t great this season by his standards. In 16 starts, the two-time MVP threw for 4,002 yards and 26 touchdowns. Not a poor performance by any means, but also not reminiscent of his best years. However, he was sublime in the NFC Divisional round against the Seattle Seahawks, making myriad throws downfield to Davante Adams, especially on third-and-long situations.

This week, the challenge intensifies. San Francisco is the top-ranked pass defense in the league, a defense that held the Packers to eight points in its blowout win back in Week 12. That day, Rodgers barely eclipsed 100 passing yards while throwing for three yards per attempt.

However, it’s not often two teams play the same game twice in a season. Green Bay head coach Matt LaFleur will have a revamped plan of how to attack the 49ers. It better start with how to scheme Adams open, who almost certainly will draw future Hall of Fame cornerback Richard Sherman and some sort of safety help alongside him.

Ultimately, though, this is about Rodgers. For the Packers to win, he’ll need to have one of his vintage performances. It’s within him, but it needs to surface in the biggest spot, sending him to the second Super Bowl of his career. Rodgers is undoubtably going to the Hall of Fame, but one more title launches him into a different historical class.

If Rodgers leads the Packers to the upset, we’ll spend the next two weeks talking about him and his legacy. We’ll talk about how the old gunslinger is back in both deed and presence. We’ll talk about how whichever team wins the AFC Championship Game will be in serious trouble.

All of that is only 60 minutes away, but to reach that point, Rodgers has to reach back and find the performance of his season.