Aaron Rodgers is fighting through a serious injury that could take some time to recover fully. After the Packers lost the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, Rogers told reporters he was “in a lot of pain” after aggravating a toe injury, according to NFL.com. Rodgers said he suffered the injury during the first half of the game after getting stepped on, saying the injury is “worse” than turf toe.
“It’s going to be another painful week next week,” Rodgers said. “And then hopefully feel better over the bye.” Despite the injury, Rodgers played one of his best games of the year, completing 23 of 33 passes for four touchdowns and no interceptions. The Vikings won the game when Greg Joseph hit a field goal as time expired. Rodgers’ toe injury was revealed when he was activated off the COVID-19 list in Week 10.
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The Packers are going to need Rodgers to be on the field as they are dealing with their share of injuries. Running back Aaron Jones missed Sunday’s game due to a knee injury, the team lost offense lineman Elgton Jenkins as he tore his ACL, and offensive lineman David Bakhtiari hasn’t played this season after tearing his ACL last season. He is expected to return soon. But one of the things the Packers need to get better at as the season winds down is getting off to faster starts.
“At times the last couple years, we’ve been so good in the first 15 to 20 plays that we script, and scoring on opening drives, touchdowns,” Rodgers said, per the team’s official website. “Hasn’t really been the case this year. We’ve been a lot slower starting, so we gotta look at that.”
“Some days you have to outscore teams that get hot on offense,” Rodgers continued. “We had an opportunity to score 40 points today, and when you’re playing an offense that’s hot, that has a hot quarterback, and stud receivers and a stud back, you gotta keep scoring. We’ve had a couple games like this over the years, thinking about 2012 especially, where we gotta outscore them at their place. We didn’t do that today.” The Packers currently have an 8-3 record and have the No. 2 seed in the NFC standings.
