It's now two games into the season, and I'm going to continue my comparison of Brett Favre, Bart Starr, and Aaron Rodgers.
This week, I looked into interceptions. Favre threw his first interception as a Jet this week and number 289 of his career. Aaron Rodgers hasn't thrown one yet this season, and in fact, he hasn't thrown one since his rookie year, despite passing for more than 10 attempts against Dallas in 2007 and New England in 2006.
Brett Favre has averaged 17 interceptions per season in his career—if you take out this short season and his rookie season—that goes up to 19.27 per year. He has ranged from 13-29 interceptions, but he has only thrown less than 15 just three times in his career.
Even if Rodgers were to throw one interception in every game the rest of the year, he would still only throw 14. By comparison, Bart Starr averaged 9.2 per year.
Furthermore, Aaron Rodgers has now gone 103-straight pass attempts without an interception. Favre has only surpassed that twice in his entire career. In 2007, he went 117 attempts before tossing one to the other team during Weeks 10-12, and in 1995, he went 125 attempts during Weeks 16-17 and the wild card and divisional playoff games.
A lot of people are looking at previous quarterbacks who followed Hall of Famers. It is clear that the player who follows a legend rarely ends up having a good career.
Steve Young is the exception to that rule, and it should be noted that he too only surpassed Rodgers' current streak twice in his career: In 1996, he went 108-straight during Weeks Nine-14 and in 1993, he went 150 straight during Weeks Seven-12.
Say what you will about Rodgers—it is only two games into his career. But the fact of the matter is, so far, he has proven to be a much better game manager than Favre ever has been.
He is also playing extremely well. Here's the weekly comparison of the three great Packer QBs in their first season as the starter (pro-rated to 16 games):
| Attempts | Completions | Percentage | Yards | TDs | INT | Rush | Yards | TDs | |
| Bart Starr | 179 | 93 | 52.0 | 1296 | 8 | 9 | 21 | 111 | 0 |
| Brett Favre | 502 | 322 | 64.1 | 3442 | 19 | 14 | 50 | 211 | 1 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 480 | 336 | 70.0 | 4048 | 32 | 0 | 96 | 480 | 8 |
2 comments Last one added 9 months ago — Leave a Comment
MJ Kasprzak 9 months ago
Nice examination, including consecutive passes without a pick, not your common fodder! Might be a bit early to pro-rate a full season for Rodgers, but it's hard not to go there with all the doubt cast on him from the beginning.
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Sting Em 9 months ago
I've seen enough to say that it's time for the "off with their heads" critics of Thompson and McCarthy to serve themselves up a little crow. And it looks like they can expect to eat a lot more by Thanksgiving.
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