Aaron Rodgers blames receiver for Jordan Love's ugly interception
Aaron Rodgers is showing frustration at training camp, and much of it has to do with his young receivers making mistakes and not playing within the context of the offense. He's been so defensive this week that he's even extended his critiques to plays that he wasn't involved in. That includes an interception Jordan Love threw in the Green Bay Packers' preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers.
It was the third interception that Love threw, which on paper doesn't look good. Both Rodgers and head coach Matt LaFleur have been pretty clear that none of the interceptions were actually the fault of the former first-round pick, though.
Two of Love's interceptions bounced off his receiver's hands. The third, the play in question, was a bad route by second-year receiver Amari Rodgers. That is, at least, according to the four-time MVP, who does have some credibility when speaking about the Packers offense.
“We should have been smoking down the seam and have a chance at a touchdown, instead we’re in a tight spot with the pocket collapsing, throwing a contested ball to a guy running the wrong route,” Rodgers said, according to Peter Bukowski of "Locked On Packers."
For what it's worth, it was Love who choose to throw the ball. He could have either thrown it away or eaten it, taken a sack and lived to fight another day. With that said, it also doesn't take a four-time MVP quarterback to see that if Amari Rodgers continued running straight up the seam instead of flattening the route out between the hashes, Love and the Packers very well could have had a huge play — if not a touchdown.
Fundamentally, even if Amari Rodgers was meant to drag that route inside, you're not supposed to let the defender cut that route off and get underneath it. That's what ultimately led to the interception, which means that Aaron Rodgers (one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time) is right.
Whether Amari Rodgers ran the drag over the middle when he was supposed to run a "go" down the seam, or he ran the drag route wrong... either way, that interception wasn't the fault of Love.
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