Aaron Rodgers is a long-time adversary. He is a thorn in the side of Bears fans and has been for some time now. And after signing an extension in the offseason, it looks like he’ll be around to pester us some more. Trust me, I’m not looking forward to it any more than you.
But once in a while, your worst enemy makes a good point. Or, at minimum, makes note of something that makes you think twice. That happens to be the case with Rodgers’ recent commentary about the importance of practice reps:
“I think practice reps, at this point, are more important than the preseason. I know it’s not a popular opinion, but preseason has changed over the years. It’s very vanilla on defense. … But for offensive players, the practice reps are the most importance reps. Because we’re going against the same level of defenders, so 1’s go against 1’s, 2’s against 2’s. There’s not a talent difference usually. And you can see the adjustments because defenses don’t just play seven-man box, two-high. Seven-man box, one-high, one-high man, one-high zone, two-high zone โ that’s about all you see in the preseason. In practice, we see pressures. We have adjustments , we have audibles, we have hand signals, we have reading coverages on the run, we have disguises for our defense. There are so many more things that test our offenses in these practice reps, and they are so, so important.”
I don’t like the guy, but he makes some good points. And it is why we were all wishing Justin Fields would’ve been given a larger workload of practice snaps last year. It’s not that I didn’t realize the importance of practice reps last summer. I knew how valuable those snaps could’ve been for Fields. But it didn’t really hit until watching the first few practices of this summer. And it wasn’t until I was seeing how few snaps Trevor Siemian and Nathan Peterman were getting when it hit me. That was when I had the a-ha! moment.
Standing on the sidelines at Halas Hall thinking: Wow, this was Justin Fields last year after watching a backup QB take a single rep before moving on to the next drill. And suddenly, I’m a lot more appreciative of Fields getting a full share of first-team snaps this summer.