Aaron Rodgers needs a second Super Bowl to cement his Green Bay Packers legacy

After Aaron Rodgers signed his new monster new deal, the Green Bay Packers are under pressure to deliver this season to avoid wasting an NFL great.

The Green Bay Packers were both relieved and delighted when Aaron Rodgers signed his huge new deal with the team, but now they're both under pressure to deliver.

After almost leaving last summer, Rodgers managed to heal his rift with the Packers front office so much that he agreed to stay on for at least another two seasons.

A monster three-year contract worth $150million makes the 38-year-old the top earner in the NFL, but now the back-to-back MVP and the team need to deliver another Super Bowl.

Head coach Matt LeFleur has led the team to three straight 13-win seasons and two NFC Championship games, but each year they've come up short in the playoffs.
Now with a huge investment in four-time MVP Rodgers, who is nearing the end of his career, Green Bay have no more wiggle room - the time to win is now.

Rodgers needs another Super Bowl for legacy

Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers
Rodgers is a unique character, not your typical NFL star, who very much carves his own path out in life - but even for this deep thinker the decision to stay at Lambeau Field was easily the best one for his chances of winning a Super Bowl.

And he needs that second Super Bowl - even just to get to one - as for a player like Rodgers to end his career having played in just one Super Bowl with this franchise is almost unthinkable.

This season will be the 12th since his one and only appearance, which luckily he won so at least he has a ring - but Tom Brady has seven, Payton Manning has two, Eli Manning has two and even Ben Roethlisberger has two.

For a quarterback who has such unbelievable statistics and such a fantastic highlight reel of performances and throws, Rodgers has underperformed if he only makes one Super Bowl - and for a man who thinks he's the best and has a lot of stats to back him up, another piece of jewelry would enhance that legacy.

So while Rodgers may well be the best QB we've ever seen, he has these next two or three seasons to really go out and prove that - or at least go and make a case that he should be up there with the Bradys and Mannings in the pantheon of NFL greats.

Packers last roll of the dice with Rodgers

The Packers, specifically GM Brian Gutekunst, almost flushed away their star man when they traded for QB Jordan Love and soured the relationship with Rodgers almost beyond repair.
Now they're keeping their man, for at least two years, but they've had to pay big time and now need some clever salary cap management and team building to piece together a unit good enough to win them a Super Bowl.
Green Bay's called "Titletown" for their winning history, but there's not been anything in a decade littered with near misses, especially recently when they've looked the business in the regular season but not been able to get over the hump.
They couldn't stop the San Francisco 49ers' run game in 2020, and then couldn't stop Tom Brady and the Buccaneers in 2021 as they came up one game short of the Super Bowl in successive seasons.
When they looked to have addressed those issues, their special teams had a nightmare in a tame home loss to the 49ers again this year - when Rodgers this time even failed to score a touchdown in a home playoff game, so he wasn't blameless.

They've lost star wideout Davante Adams to the Raiders, and the replacements have been low-key with veteran Sammy Watkins joining three wide receivers from the NFL Draft - headlined by second-rounder Christian Watson.

Green Bay know time is running out on Rodgers, they can't afford to be building for the future and their salary cap situation is merely being kicked down the curb. They simply have to keep giving Rodgers a team he can win with.
Otherwise they'll be the team that had a generational talent like Aaron Rodgers for almost two decades and made just one Super Bowl.

Can Aaron Rodgers and the Packers win the Super Bowl?

The Packers have generally been contenders when Rodgers has been fit - they've won the NFC North eight of the last 11 seasons since their Super Bowl win, and been in the playoffs nine. Ironically they didn't win it when they went all the way.
They've lost four NFC Championship games, each time finding a different way to lose the game before the Super Bowl, so now they have to find a way to get that extra edge when they really need it.

With Adams gone, it could mean a slight shift in focus, with the team beefing up on defence and having to lean on the run game more and a more spread-out passing attack, using multiple receivers as opposed to their one go-to guy.

Rodgers has won back-to-back MVPs throwing to Adams, but while a new approach may drop his stats, it could increase his chances of winning a ring - Adams was great but when the chips were down the entire stadium always knew where the ball was going.
Some of Rodgers' stats are insane - he's thrown 136 TDs and just 15 interceptions in the last four years when leading the league each time in interception percentage, that's just 0.6% of 2,223 passes ending up in the hands of the opposition.
That's incredible ball security and in a run-first, defensive Packers outfit, where Rodgers isn't needed to win the game every week, that may just be the very thing needed.

They'll fancy the NFC North again, and the NFC in general isn't as tough as the AFC, so they're still right there in the window, they always are with Rodgers.

They now just need to banish those bad playoff memories and make proper use of one of the greatest ever to walk onto the gridiron.

READ MORE: Packers will challenge without Adams says Aaron Rodgers

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