The Best Type of Criticism

Before the Green Bay Packers' 42-24 humiliation of the then-undefeated Houston Texans (on their own turf!), Aaron Rodgers was having a 'disappointing' season by his standards. His team was 2-3, having been robbed of a sure-win in Seattle (maybe you've heard about that) and something didn't seem right compared to the well-oiled machine that the Packers offense was last year. Entering Sunday night, Rodgers had 10 touchdowns, four interceptions, and a QB rating of 96.9. Sure, numbers that Ryan Fitzpatrick would kill for, but not MVP-level.

So what's the problem? On CBS Sports' pre-game show "The NFL Today," Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe provided a potential diagnosis:

"I think they have some deeper issues, but let's get to the surface issues right now. They can't run the football, so that puts a lot of pressure on Aaron Rodgers and that poor offensive line. Aaron Rodgers doesn't always do a great job of getting rid of the football on rhythm. So now he's taking some unnecessary sacks."

Sounds fair enough. But Sharpe goes on:

"But what I see is a lot of finger pointing by Aaron Rodgers. I don't really know Aaron Rodgers, haven't been around him. But he strikes me as a guy that, it's always someone else's fault other than his own. I'm not so sure, I'm not so sure, that deep down inside, how well his receiving corps really likes Aaron Rodgers...I tell you what else, just because you're a great quarterback and an MVP quarterback that doesn't make you a great person. There is a difference between the two."

All right, so Shannon Sharpe pretty much just accused the reigning MVP of the following things on national television:

-he blames others for his failures

-he deflects attention off himself

-his receivers secretly don't like him and they don't even sit together at recess

-he's not a good person

And what expert testimony is Shannon Sharpe basing these not-harmless accusations on?

"I don't really know Aaron Rodgers, haven't been around him."

What was that, sorry?

"I don't really know Aaron Rodgers, haven't been around him."

Sharpe is basically calling Rodgers a bad person, questioning his personal relationship with his receivers, and pretending to report live from inside the quarterback's head, but he simultaneously admits--in the very same paragraph--that he doesn't really know the guy he's talking about. What?

This reminds me of one of my favorite posts from the satirical blog "Fire Joe Morgan." The post was written in response to an article written for the Chicago Tribune in March, 2008. The Tribune author had seen the baseball season projections produced by a computer system at Baseball Prospectus, and the computer had projected the hometown White Sox for a mediocre third-place finish and a 77-85 overall record. So the snarky Tribune author, clearly miffed, had this to say about the computer's prediction:

>>I know as much about computers as I do about astronomy, but I believe the computer term for Baseball Prospectus' Sox prediction is "fatal error."

To which the writers at Fire Joe Morgan responded:

>>Nothing better than the profession of complete ignorance, followed immediately by a pronouncement of certitude. "I have never heard a piece of orchestral or chamber music in my life, but I can say conclusively that Dvorák's Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, is a piece of shit."

And that's pretty much all you can say about Sharpe: a profession of complete ignorance, followed by character assassination on national television.

Anyway, I think Rodgers' receivers are quite fond of their quarterback today. On Sunday night, they had six touchdown passes to divide up among themselves.