If you liked this one, feel free to check out the Tom Brady counterparts in the archive. You'd almost certainly like them too! It's just the same title, except with 'Tom Brady' in place of 'Aaron Rodgers.'
I of course really enjoyed this article, but my one note was when you mentioned how rare it is to actually raise your game in the playoffs, you used Joe Montana as an example of a guy who didn’t. I haven’t looked into it, it was both before my time and before like, EPA, but I always thought Montana was considered the canonical example of someone who raised his game in the playoffs (and his playoff stats remain excellent). Is that not the case?
I hate to give such a copout answer, but the truth of the matter is meh. Yes and no. I was saying throughout this article that Aaron's 2010 is one of the best playoff runs there's ever been, but Joe Montana's 1989 is THE best playoff run there's ever been. End of discussion. Everybody accepts that, but nobody seems to notice how much that skews his playoff numbers.
I mentioned EPA/Play in the article, but for players who played a long time ago, I prefer NY/A, so let's use that for comparison. Aaron's career regular season NY/A is 6.7. His career playoff NY/A is 6.69, so the exact same story of playing almost exactly the same against the tougher playoff competition than against the weaker regular season competition.
Applying the same comparison to Joe Montana, looking before 1989, his career NY/A is 6.68. His career playoff NY/A is 6.82. Exactly like Aaron, this is nearly the same player from regular to postseason. Looking after 1989, his career NY/A is 6.56, and his playoff NY/A is 6.63. It's only when you include the monstrous 1989 that you get the holistic result that Joe's career NY/A is 6.74 and his postseason NY/A is 7.06.
0.3 yards per attempt is quite a sizeable increase, but it all comes in one place, so no. I don't believe Joe Montana made a habit of raising his game in the playoffs. I believe that he raised his game in a way nobody has done before or since in 1989, which skews the numbers upwards. Numbers that otherwise are pretty much exactly in line with his regular season numbers, just like Aaron's are.
It's not like 1989 doesn't exist. He did it. It counts, but in a holistic sense, as a team as good as the 49ers, you'd probably rather a QB be 10% better than normal in every game, than be 100% better in three games, and 0% better than normal otherwise, which is what Joe Montana did. The narrative is skewed around Joe, but I fundamentally disagree with the idea that he raised his game in any way come postseason time.
You know who does raise their game in the playoffs? Kurt Warner (7.08 career NY/A regular season, 7.98 post), and Matthew Stafford (6.51 reg, 7.42 post), but since the public doesn't actually care about good playoff play, only caring about team wins, they choose to focus on people like Joe Montana and Tom Brady instead of the ACTUALLY clutch playoff players.
A lot of this rubs off on Aaron. He's not on Kurt or Matt's level, but he is on Joe Montana and Tom Brady's level. These second tier playoff players that do not wilt against the much better competition, but do not rise to it either.
Before reading this let me say that my view is that I can’t think of a player in any sport who has had more clearly visible playoff choke jobs than Roger’s without it impacting his legacy
Maybe reading it will change my mind, I’ll reply here after I have, but from his interception-athon against Seattle to wasted double digit win seasons, I can’t think of another player who so rarely gets mentioned as a choker with this many chokes on his resume (especially in years where he had regular seasons for the ages but then comes up average or even terrible in the playoffs)
I think Aaron gets mentioned as a playoff choker a lot. Not as much as Tony Romo or Lamar Jackson or somebody like that, but that's because he's not as bad as those two players.
I hope reading this article did begin to sway your opinion a bit, because I'm not sure there were many clearly visible choke jobs. 2009 was bad, but that was his first time. I'm willing to let him away with it. 2014 in Seattle was awful too, evidenced by the 'Not Good Enough' tag, but even the best playoff players are allowed one day off (see Patrick Mahomes in the 2020 Super Bowl). From there, what other chances did Aaron have?
2010 was the championship. 2011, 2016, and 2019 were lost by Aaron's defences before he ever stepped on the field, unless he played an all-time great playoff game himself, which is not a reasonable expectation. Aaron's team was not behind when he left the field in 2013 or 2015. 2012 is somewhat debatable. It's the same as 2011, 2016, 2019, but it just would've required a great game instead of an all-time great one. Still a lot to ask against a top five defence in 2012 San Francisco, but not as egregious as the top two. I'm not willing to say there was no chance at all in this instance as I was in the other three.
At this point, we're almost out of playoff years. 2020, 2021, and 2022 were all personal Aaron failures. I'm willing to say that, but that's only three seasons, including the very end. Adding this all together, there are five losses that I would put squarely on Aaron's shoulders. That's 2009, 2014, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Comparing this with other all-time great players, this is not all that out of the norm. For instance, I would put Tom Brady's losses in 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2019, and 2022 all squarely on him.
Seven vs five in a few more playoff years is not a significant difference, but we can do this with players who had a more similar playoff sample size to Aaron too. Take for example Joe Montana, who I consider to be primarily at fault for his team's losses in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1993. This even features three years in a row, just like Aaron does.
My primary objective by looking at every game individually is to eliminate the wide brushes that come with evaluating a playoff career holistically. When you look at it as a whole, you say that a player getting five first round byes in a career, but only one championship, is a disappointment, but when you go game by game, Aaron lost very few playoff games that he should have won. The same DOES NOT apply to the Green Bay Packers (for whom 2011 and 2016 and 2019 were brutal failures), but I'm not talking about the Green Bay Packers. I'm talking about Aaron Rodgers, who does not have to share the blame for his defenders' shortcomings in 2011, 2016, and 2019. If you further eliminate the years when the Packers were just overmatched against much better teams (2012, 2013, 2015), this is how you get to me blaming Aaron for only five of the losses.
I really wish 2014 never happened, because that is the one season that will forever continue to be the lynchpin for people who insist that Aaron was a bad playoff player. That was the one time where the Packers were the best team left, had no radical defensive failures, but failed to win the championship. If I could just snap 2014 Seattle out of existence, this argument would be a lot easier to make. Since it's there I have to roll with it.
There is one black eye, but I don't think it ought to be black enough to tint the whole picture.
Great read! Lifelong Packers fan here, and it’s some small solace to see that Rodgers and Brady performed along the same lines. For Brady to go close to .500 in his poor performance games and Rodgers to go 1-8 says it all. Those Patriot teams for the most part excelled at all three levels, while my general recollection of those Packers teams was see how far Rodgers can take us. (I’ll never forget prime Julio Jones torching LaDarius Gunter, an undrafted free agent who somehow became that team’s #1 corner.)
A little but painful to read through all those shortcomings but an excellent analysis, especially when paired with your Brady deep dive. Excited to see what you come up with next!
The Packers had a few year period there from 2005-2009 where they had the draft completely mastered, which manifested in the ungodly rosters in 2009, 2010, and 2011, but after that they fell back into being the same old Packers, and have pretty much been that way since. Great at finding QBs, but really mediocre at finding every other position. This hurt Aaron a lot in all these playoff scenarios where it would've just taken a little push to put them over the top.
The losses in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2020, 2021, and 2022 all could've all been turned around with just a tiny push, but in Aaron's career he could just never find that tiny push. If we take 2001 for example, Tom Brady got that little push in three consecutive rounds. The tuck rule against Oakland, getting hurt and being replaced by the far superior Drew Bledsoe in the AFC Championship, and endless turnovers leading to easy points out of the Rams in the Super Bowl. Three little pushes (all of which had nothing to do with Tom Brady) that spelled the difference in razor thin games. That's more than Aaron got in his entire career.
If that's not indicative of the difference between these two players, I don't know what is. It's the reason why Tom isn't perceived as a playoff choker, but Aaron is. Imagine if Matt Ryan in 2016 had blown up, committing four turnovers, instead of doing what he did. That would've been a Tom Brady story, but since it's an Aaron Rodgers story he had the best playoff game of the last 25 years instead.
Thank you for the compliments my friend! I'm very happy you enjoyed it. Packer fans deserve a bit more positivity in the Aaron Rodgers story. The rhetoric is all very negative right now.
I am not a fan of any particular team, but most of my family and friends are either Vikings or Bears fans, and their Packers hate has rubbed off on me. That made for a very interesting experience when I watched that 2015 game against the Cardinals with two friends who are Packers fans. Watching their emotional roller coaster at the end of the game while being unable to express my own quiet delight at the outcome is something I'll never forget.
That's wild James, because I had the EXACT opposite experience.
My grandparents had a vacation home in Phoenix, the way I remember it about 45 minutes away from the Cardinals' stadium. A lot of my family would go vacation down there in the winters, to get away from the Canadian cold. Years and years of this, and occasionally going to games down there, had bred a softness for the Arizona Cardinals in much of my family, which included myself at the time.
When Carson Palmer completed the long pass to Larry Fitzgerald in OT, that remains to this day the only time I have yelled at my TV screen in excitement over an NFL game. I'm not much of the yelling type, and the Jaguars have never had such an exciting moment in the history of the team (except for 1996, which I've only watched in retrospect), so this 2015 Cardinals game is the most exciting experience I've ever had as an NFL fan. Bar none.
We all watched in the little basement we had, and you could literally feel the silence when Aaron completed each of those two hail mary passes. It felt so Cardinals. As a team who'd had very limited success since 1976, to lose a playoff game like this would be very on-brand for them, so when they didn't, none of us could contain our excitement. Let's not talk about what happened the next week, but this Cardinals-Packers game remains one of my most prized football memories, even though it didn't even involve the Jags.
Such is the life of a Jaguars fan, but also such is the gravity of what Aaron pulled off in the last minute of this game. As somebody who was also rooting against the Packers, you understand what we were feeling that day. Our jaws were just on the floor, in absolute disbelief at what we'd just seen. Thankfully, the Cards had a clutch moment of their own just around the bend, but if they didn't have one, this could've been remembered as possibly the most iconic moment in the history of the league in my opinion.
I used gamepass in 2012 offseason as a Giants fan to review that 39-20 Upset of the 15-1 Packers Rodgers MVP season in Lambeau. I didn't know Xs and Os as well but the film was shocking. Aaron Rodgers literally choked. Open guys like Jordy nelson no safety deep 5 yarda of separation were ignored all game in crucial 3rd downs leading to punts. Until then I thought "choking" by QBs in postseason was bullshit. That playoff caliber defenses just have a say in things. The Giants D that day did not smother the targets nor sack Rodgers mercilessly like Brady in SB42.
For many early Rodgers years even after 2010 SB; Rodgers didn't have 4th qtr comebacks. If the D didnt give him a 4th quarter lead; it was a Green bay loss. Then he got famous for it; especially late game bomb completions.
No doubt. Coming off a playoff run that very few have ever matched in 2010, 2011 was a big time letdown.
People forget that the Packers were the hotshot pick to be the next dynasty at the time, because that all died in one day in the 2011 playoffs. Still though, Aaron that day was better than 15+ Tom Brady playoff performances. He did not hurt his team. He merely failed to significantly help them. From Aaron Rodgers, this is seriously below expectations, but if Aaron Rodgers wasn't Aaron Rodgers, and was instead named, for example, Kyle Boller, that Giants game would've been seen as a tremendously positive performance. Tom got away with this all the time, because it happened in wins. Aaron never got away with it, because if he was below his best (unless the opposing QB was Caleb Hanie), it was a loss every time.
I'm not sure if we're agreeing or disagreeing. Aaron did play below his best in the playoffs a lot, but very rarely did he actually hurt his team. It seemed a lot worse than it was, because expectations were so high. I'm not sure if I would call this choking, because when I think 'choke,' I think 2019 Lamar Jackson or 2024 Jared Goff, who come out and singlehandedly destroy their team's chances of winning. Aaron (except in 2021) didn't really do that ever, which is why he and Tom Brady go in a separate category for me, which I clumsily term 'guys that played below their best in the playoffs a lot,' instead of playoff chokers.
Also, 2009 was a brutal late game failure, but there were fourth quarter comebacks out of Aaron in 2013 (twice), 2014 (twice), and 2015. Two of these five comebacks stuck, but in the other three he tied the game and never got the chance to touch the ball again. It's Aaron's fault that he found himself behind in the fourth quarter behind so often, but I reject the notion that he somehow struggled to come back in the fourth. That's five playoff or playoff adjacent games in just three years featuring a fourth quarter comeback. Sure, he never had another one after that, but five is more fourth quarter comebacks than most QBs (even great ones) ever get.
I think your point was about 2011 and 2012, but expecting Aaron to stand up to 0.66 EPA/Play Eli Manning or 0.39 EPA/Play Colin Kaepernick stretches the bounds of reasonable expectations, at least in my opinion. To win either game would've required one of the better playoff starts of all time, which is not reasonable to expect out of a player, so he gets very limited heat (at least from me) for either of those two losses. In 2013, 2014, and 2015, Aaron was not losing the final time he got to touch the ball. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why early years Aaron Rodgers gets so much heat.
Yes, 10+ point wins were possible, but they were possible for Tom Brady too, and he never got any either. It's just hard to do in the playoffs, so you must rely on your defence to make fourth quarter stops a lot. In Aaron's 2013, 2014, and 2015 playoff losses, they just couldn't find one when they needed. Is this his fault? I don't think so.
I personally think that (specifically in 2014) if the Packer defence could've found a stop when they need one, Aaron would be a two time champion. Two isn't great, but it likely would've been enough to keep the wolves at bay as far as all this 'poor playoff performer' stuff. From Aaron's perspective, it's just luck that the crucial defensive stop didn't happen any season except 2010. His luck generally tended to be bad.
Great read!
Thank you very much Ben! Happy you enjoyed it!
If you liked this one, feel free to check out the Tom Brady counterparts in the archive. You'd almost certainly like them too! It's just the same title, except with 'Tom Brady' in place of 'Aaron Rodgers.'
Will definitely give it a read...thanks Robbie!
I of course really enjoyed this article, but my one note was when you mentioned how rare it is to actually raise your game in the playoffs, you used Joe Montana as an example of a guy who didn’t. I haven’t looked into it, it was both before my time and before like, EPA, but I always thought Montana was considered the canonical example of someone who raised his game in the playoffs (and his playoff stats remain excellent). Is that not the case?
I hate to give such a copout answer, but the truth of the matter is meh. Yes and no. I was saying throughout this article that Aaron's 2010 is one of the best playoff runs there's ever been, but Joe Montana's 1989 is THE best playoff run there's ever been. End of discussion. Everybody accepts that, but nobody seems to notice how much that skews his playoff numbers.
I mentioned EPA/Play in the article, but for players who played a long time ago, I prefer NY/A, so let's use that for comparison. Aaron's career regular season NY/A is 6.7. His career playoff NY/A is 6.69, so the exact same story of playing almost exactly the same against the tougher playoff competition than against the weaker regular season competition.
Applying the same comparison to Joe Montana, looking before 1989, his career NY/A is 6.68. His career playoff NY/A is 6.82. Exactly like Aaron, this is nearly the same player from regular to postseason. Looking after 1989, his career NY/A is 6.56, and his playoff NY/A is 6.63. It's only when you include the monstrous 1989 that you get the holistic result that Joe's career NY/A is 6.74 and his postseason NY/A is 7.06.
0.3 yards per attempt is quite a sizeable increase, but it all comes in one place, so no. I don't believe Joe Montana made a habit of raising his game in the playoffs. I believe that he raised his game in a way nobody has done before or since in 1989, which skews the numbers upwards. Numbers that otherwise are pretty much exactly in line with his regular season numbers, just like Aaron's are.
It's not like 1989 doesn't exist. He did it. It counts, but in a holistic sense, as a team as good as the 49ers, you'd probably rather a QB be 10% better than normal in every game, than be 100% better in three games, and 0% better than normal otherwise, which is what Joe Montana did. The narrative is skewed around Joe, but I fundamentally disagree with the idea that he raised his game in any way come postseason time.
You know who does raise their game in the playoffs? Kurt Warner (7.08 career NY/A regular season, 7.98 post), and Matthew Stafford (6.51 reg, 7.42 post), but since the public doesn't actually care about good playoff play, only caring about team wins, they choose to focus on people like Joe Montana and Tom Brady instead of the ACTUALLY clutch playoff players.
A lot of this rubs off on Aaron. He's not on Kurt or Matt's level, but he is on Joe Montana and Tom Brady's level. These second tier playoff players that do not wilt against the much better competition, but do not rise to it either.
Before reading this let me say that my view is that I can’t think of a player in any sport who has had more clearly visible playoff choke jobs than Roger’s without it impacting his legacy
Maybe reading it will change my mind, I’ll reply here after I have, but from his interception-athon against Seattle to wasted double digit win seasons, I can’t think of another player who so rarely gets mentioned as a choker with this many chokes on his resume (especially in years where he had regular seasons for the ages but then comes up average or even terrible in the playoffs)
I think Aaron gets mentioned as a playoff choker a lot. Not as much as Tony Romo or Lamar Jackson or somebody like that, but that's because he's not as bad as those two players.
I hope reading this article did begin to sway your opinion a bit, because I'm not sure there were many clearly visible choke jobs. 2009 was bad, but that was his first time. I'm willing to let him away with it. 2014 in Seattle was awful too, evidenced by the 'Not Good Enough' tag, but even the best playoff players are allowed one day off (see Patrick Mahomes in the 2020 Super Bowl). From there, what other chances did Aaron have?
2010 was the championship. 2011, 2016, and 2019 were lost by Aaron's defences before he ever stepped on the field, unless he played an all-time great playoff game himself, which is not a reasonable expectation. Aaron's team was not behind when he left the field in 2013 or 2015. 2012 is somewhat debatable. It's the same as 2011, 2016, 2019, but it just would've required a great game instead of an all-time great one. Still a lot to ask against a top five defence in 2012 San Francisco, but not as egregious as the top two. I'm not willing to say there was no chance at all in this instance as I was in the other three.
At this point, we're almost out of playoff years. 2020, 2021, and 2022 were all personal Aaron failures. I'm willing to say that, but that's only three seasons, including the very end. Adding this all together, there are five losses that I would put squarely on Aaron's shoulders. That's 2009, 2014, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Comparing this with other all-time great players, this is not all that out of the norm. For instance, I would put Tom Brady's losses in 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2019, and 2022 all squarely on him.
Seven vs five in a few more playoff years is not a significant difference, but we can do this with players who had a more similar playoff sample size to Aaron too. Take for example Joe Montana, who I consider to be primarily at fault for his team's losses in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1993. This even features three years in a row, just like Aaron does.
My primary objective by looking at every game individually is to eliminate the wide brushes that come with evaluating a playoff career holistically. When you look at it as a whole, you say that a player getting five first round byes in a career, but only one championship, is a disappointment, but when you go game by game, Aaron lost very few playoff games that he should have won. The same DOES NOT apply to the Green Bay Packers (for whom 2011 and 2016 and 2019 were brutal failures), but I'm not talking about the Green Bay Packers. I'm talking about Aaron Rodgers, who does not have to share the blame for his defenders' shortcomings in 2011, 2016, and 2019. If you further eliminate the years when the Packers were just overmatched against much better teams (2012, 2013, 2015), this is how you get to me blaming Aaron for only five of the losses.
I really wish 2014 never happened, because that is the one season that will forever continue to be the lynchpin for people who insist that Aaron was a bad playoff player. That was the one time where the Packers were the best team left, had no radical defensive failures, but failed to win the championship. If I could just snap 2014 Seattle out of existence, this argument would be a lot easier to make. Since it's there I have to roll with it.
There is one black eye, but I don't think it ought to be black enough to tint the whole picture.
Great read! Lifelong Packers fan here, and it’s some small solace to see that Rodgers and Brady performed along the same lines. For Brady to go close to .500 in his poor performance games and Rodgers to go 1-8 says it all. Those Patriot teams for the most part excelled at all three levels, while my general recollection of those Packers teams was see how far Rodgers can take us. (I’ll never forget prime Julio Jones torching LaDarius Gunter, an undrafted free agent who somehow became that team’s #1 corner.)
A little but painful to read through all those shortcomings but an excellent analysis, especially when paired with your Brady deep dive. Excited to see what you come up with next!
Thank you very much Tim!
The Packers had a few year period there from 2005-2009 where they had the draft completely mastered, which manifested in the ungodly rosters in 2009, 2010, and 2011, but after that they fell back into being the same old Packers, and have pretty much been that way since. Great at finding QBs, but really mediocre at finding every other position. This hurt Aaron a lot in all these playoff scenarios where it would've just taken a little push to put them over the top.
The losses in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2020, 2021, and 2022 all could've all been turned around with just a tiny push, but in Aaron's career he could just never find that tiny push. If we take 2001 for example, Tom Brady got that little push in three consecutive rounds. The tuck rule against Oakland, getting hurt and being replaced by the far superior Drew Bledsoe in the AFC Championship, and endless turnovers leading to easy points out of the Rams in the Super Bowl. Three little pushes (all of which had nothing to do with Tom Brady) that spelled the difference in razor thin games. That's more than Aaron got in his entire career.
If that's not indicative of the difference between these two players, I don't know what is. It's the reason why Tom isn't perceived as a playoff choker, but Aaron is. Imagine if Matt Ryan in 2016 had blown up, committing four turnovers, instead of doing what he did. That would've been a Tom Brady story, but since it's an Aaron Rodgers story he had the best playoff game of the last 25 years instead.
Thank you for the compliments my friend! I'm very happy you enjoyed it. Packer fans deserve a bit more positivity in the Aaron Rodgers story. The rhetoric is all very negative right now.
I am not a fan of any particular team, but most of my family and friends are either Vikings or Bears fans, and their Packers hate has rubbed off on me. That made for a very interesting experience when I watched that 2015 game against the Cardinals with two friends who are Packers fans. Watching their emotional roller coaster at the end of the game while being unable to express my own quiet delight at the outcome is something I'll never forget.
That's wild James, because I had the EXACT opposite experience.
My grandparents had a vacation home in Phoenix, the way I remember it about 45 minutes away from the Cardinals' stadium. A lot of my family would go vacation down there in the winters, to get away from the Canadian cold. Years and years of this, and occasionally going to games down there, had bred a softness for the Arizona Cardinals in much of my family, which included myself at the time.
When Carson Palmer completed the long pass to Larry Fitzgerald in OT, that remains to this day the only time I have yelled at my TV screen in excitement over an NFL game. I'm not much of the yelling type, and the Jaguars have never had such an exciting moment in the history of the team (except for 1996, which I've only watched in retrospect), so this 2015 Cardinals game is the most exciting experience I've ever had as an NFL fan. Bar none.
We all watched in the little basement we had, and you could literally feel the silence when Aaron completed each of those two hail mary passes. It felt so Cardinals. As a team who'd had very limited success since 1976, to lose a playoff game like this would be very on-brand for them, so when they didn't, none of us could contain our excitement. Let's not talk about what happened the next week, but this Cardinals-Packers game remains one of my most prized football memories, even though it didn't even involve the Jags.
Such is the life of a Jaguars fan, but also such is the gravity of what Aaron pulled off in the last minute of this game. As somebody who was also rooting against the Packers, you understand what we were feeling that day. Our jaws were just on the floor, in absolute disbelief at what we'd just seen. Thankfully, the Cards had a clutch moment of their own just around the bend, but if they didn't have one, this could've been remembered as possibly the most iconic moment in the history of the league in my opinion.
I'll never forget it either.
That's fantastic. I think sports is at its best when there are social connections involved.
I used gamepass in 2012 offseason as a Giants fan to review that 39-20 Upset of the 15-1 Packers Rodgers MVP season in Lambeau. I didn't know Xs and Os as well but the film was shocking. Aaron Rodgers literally choked. Open guys like Jordy nelson no safety deep 5 yarda of separation were ignored all game in crucial 3rd downs leading to punts. Until then I thought "choking" by QBs in postseason was bullshit. That playoff caliber defenses just have a say in things. The Giants D that day did not smother the targets nor sack Rodgers mercilessly like Brady in SB42.
For many early Rodgers years even after 2010 SB; Rodgers didn't have 4th qtr comebacks. If the D didnt give him a 4th quarter lead; it was a Green bay loss. Then he got famous for it; especially late game bomb completions.
No doubt. Coming off a playoff run that very few have ever matched in 2010, 2011 was a big time letdown.
People forget that the Packers were the hotshot pick to be the next dynasty at the time, because that all died in one day in the 2011 playoffs. Still though, Aaron that day was better than 15+ Tom Brady playoff performances. He did not hurt his team. He merely failed to significantly help them. From Aaron Rodgers, this is seriously below expectations, but if Aaron Rodgers wasn't Aaron Rodgers, and was instead named, for example, Kyle Boller, that Giants game would've been seen as a tremendously positive performance. Tom got away with this all the time, because it happened in wins. Aaron never got away with it, because if he was below his best (unless the opposing QB was Caleb Hanie), it was a loss every time.
I'm not sure if we're agreeing or disagreeing. Aaron did play below his best in the playoffs a lot, but very rarely did he actually hurt his team. It seemed a lot worse than it was, because expectations were so high. I'm not sure if I would call this choking, because when I think 'choke,' I think 2019 Lamar Jackson or 2024 Jared Goff, who come out and singlehandedly destroy their team's chances of winning. Aaron (except in 2021) didn't really do that ever, which is why he and Tom Brady go in a separate category for me, which I clumsily term 'guys that played below their best in the playoffs a lot,' instead of playoff chokers.
Also, 2009 was a brutal late game failure, but there were fourth quarter comebacks out of Aaron in 2013 (twice), 2014 (twice), and 2015. Two of these five comebacks stuck, but in the other three he tied the game and never got the chance to touch the ball again. It's Aaron's fault that he found himself behind in the fourth quarter behind so often, but I reject the notion that he somehow struggled to come back in the fourth. That's five playoff or playoff adjacent games in just three years featuring a fourth quarter comeback. Sure, he never had another one after that, but five is more fourth quarter comebacks than most QBs (even great ones) ever get.
I think your point was about 2011 and 2012, but expecting Aaron to stand up to 0.66 EPA/Play Eli Manning or 0.39 EPA/Play Colin Kaepernick stretches the bounds of reasonable expectations, at least in my opinion. To win either game would've required one of the better playoff starts of all time, which is not reasonable to expect out of a player, so he gets very limited heat (at least from me) for either of those two losses. In 2013, 2014, and 2015, Aaron was not losing the final time he got to touch the ball. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why early years Aaron Rodgers gets so much heat.
Yes, 10+ point wins were possible, but they were possible for Tom Brady too, and he never got any either. It's just hard to do in the playoffs, so you must rely on your defence to make fourth quarter stops a lot. In Aaron's 2013, 2014, and 2015 playoff losses, they just couldn't find one when they needed. Is this his fault? I don't think so.
I personally think that (specifically in 2014) if the Packer defence could've found a stop when they need one, Aaron would be a two time champion. Two isn't great, but it likely would've been enough to keep the wolves at bay as far as all this 'poor playoff performer' stuff. From Aaron's perspective, it's just luck that the crucial defensive stop didn't happen any season except 2010. His luck generally tended to be bad.