Can Aaron Rodgers Pack His Fantasy Football Stats Without a WR1?

Aaron Rodgers will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer and he'll often be talked about as one of the greatest to ever do it. The back-to-back MVP has shown zero signs of slowing down, but for fantasy football, it doesn't matter as much as you think it might—or maybe as much as it should.

Fantasy football has entered a new age of quarterback play, where to be an elite fantasy option, quarterbacks can no longer get by on their arm alone, even if it is a Hall of Fame one. This is where Aaron Rodgers now finds himself. To make matters especially difficult, he'll have to make do without his No. 1 receiver for the past four seasons. Davante Adams was even more than just the Packers' No. 1 receiver—he is arguably the best receiver in the NFL.

The 2022 season will bring forth one of the biggest challenges Rodgers has had to face in his career with no dependable pass-catchers. While fantasy managers have been pleading for the Packers to add a No. 2 receiver, he's always had at least one stud. Even before Adams, Rodgers had been blessed with receivers such as Donald Driver, Greg Jennings, James Jones, Jordy Nelson, and Randall Cobb. Will Rodgers be able to parlay a mediocre group of pass-catchers into another top-12 fantasy finish in 2022?

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Aaron Rodgers' Hall of Fame Career

His play over the past two seasons has been out of this world. He's thrown for 8,414 yards with 85 touchdowns and 9 interceptions. There's no denying his excellence in regard to his real-life value and his history as an elite fantasy asset over the years.

Over the past 10 years, he's been a top-10 quarterback nine times. He's finished inside the top five an additional five times and finished as the very best quarterback in terms of PPG twice. Since becoming the starter of the Packers, he's amassed 55,031 yards and 448 touchdowns across 206 starts. This amounts to 267 yards per game (a pace of 4,541 yards over 17-games) and 2.17 touchdowns (a pace of 37 touchdowns over 17-games). He's been as dominant as any other quarterback, both on Sundays and in our fantasy football spreadsheets.

Somehow, he's managed to actually get better the past two seasons. He's led the NFL in touchdown rate in both 2020 and 2021 with a 9.1% and 7.0% rate, respectively. In 14 years as the Packers' starter, he's had a touchdown rate higher than 7.0% on five occasions.

The question now becomes just how much the loss of Davante Adams will affect Rodgers' fantasy output. No one thinks Rodgers is going to struggle behind center. He's still going to be one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league in 2022. Will that transfer to his fantasy stats?

Life Without Davante Adams

Aaron Rodgers has managed to overcome several obstacles in the past few years to maintain his elite status as a fantasy signal-caller. In 2021, the Packers operated as one of the slowest offenses in the league. This resulted in the Packers finishing just 18th in plays per game. Rodgers and the offense in general needed to be incredibly efficient.

^{Pace data courtesy of Football Outsiders}

Those pace statistics are with Adams in the lineup. If the Packers decide to lean on the run game more in 2022, which is very possible given their pass-catching corps, we could see the Packers operate at an even slower pace. Throughout the offseason, the Packers have chosen to beef up their defense and have made very few additions to the receiving group.

Christian Watson was a high second-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, but he's a fifth-year player coming from North Dakota State, an FCS school. While his insane athletic ability will help him make some splash plays as a rookie, getting consistent play from him is likely wishful thinking considering the substantial increase in competition between the FCS and NFL.

The best skill players on Green Bay's offense are Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon, their two starting running backs. Fantasy managers should expect them to play to their strengths. The Packers also employ one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, which only enforces the idea the Packers might focus on the running game this season.

The table above shows how many pass attempts the Packers have had the past three years and where that ranked across the league. As you can see, they haven't been inside the top 50% of the league once in that span. Again, that was with Adams on the team—what will happen with Adams in Las Vegas? We've already seen what this might look like. Since 2017, Adams has missed eight games.

Aaron Rodgers with and without Davante Adams over the last five seasons, courtesy of @RotoViz.



Limited sample size, but the splits are negligible. pic.twitter.com/0AQZfj8VyK

— Kate Magdziuk (@FFballblast) March 18, 2022

On one hand, you can see that his touchdown per game average got better and his yards per game stayed roughly the same. So, maybe everything will be fine and nothing will change. Fantasy managers are best exhibiting a level of caution with that thought process. While Rodgers is great enough to not fall off a cliff without Adams, it makes little to no sense that his efficiency and effectiveness would get better without the No. 1 receiver in the league. This is the danger of using a small sample size.

The one number that should give pause to Rodgers' maintaining his top-10 status in 2022 should be his attempts in those eight games. We notice that with Adams, Rodgers attempted 35.2 passes per game. In eight games without him, that drops to 30.5. Over a full 17-game season, that's a difference of roughly 80 attempts. Going back to his touchdowns and yards in the games without Adams, does it really make sense that his touchdown and yardage numbers over the course of a full season with Adams would stay the same, or in some cases get better despite being without Adams and having 80 fewer attempts?

After his magical 2020 season where Rodgers set a career-high touchdown rate, fantasy managers everywhere said to expect regression in 2021. That came, just not nearly to the point where Rodgers' lost his top-10 fantasy value. His 2021 touchdown rate did regress, down to 7%, which still led the league. We should still be expecting regression in this department, especially now that he's lost the league's greatest red zone weapon.

The table above shows the number of offensive touchdowns scored via the pass or the run by the Packers, as well as the league average for each year. As you can see, over the past two seasons the Packers have been significantly ahead of the league average in passing touchdowns. With the changes in personnel, fantasy managers should expect these numbers to regress closer to the league average.

^{*Adams missed four games in 2019}

Rodgers has a career 6.3% touchdown rate and based on last year's attempts, he would've thrown four fewer touchdowns. The loss of 16 points would have dropped him down to QB12. He would have still been ahead of Russell Wilson and Kirk Cousins, both of whom have seen their stock increase over this past offseason.

The back-to-back MVP is currently being drafted as the QB13 on Underdog and he's ranked as the QB10 here at 4for4. There are plenty of things to be concerned about with Rodgers this season and it's fair to wonder what his ceiling is without Adams. The Packers have operated as one of the slowest offenses in the league and without the league's best receiver, it would make sense for that trend to continue or even get worse.

That's to say nothing of the fact that the Packers have been in the bottom half of the league in pass attempts the past three seasons with LaFleur calling plays. If these two elements stay the same or worsen (slower pace and/or fewer attempts) Rodgers and his fantasy managers will need his insane 2020 and 2021 efficiency to continue and it's hard to buy into that without Adams and with his new cast of misfit receivers.

The Bottom Line

• The Packers' limited passing volume and the slow-paced offense have required Rodgers to have elite efficiency to maintain his high level of fantasy play.
• The loss of Adams begs the question if Rodgers can continue his incredibly high touchdown rate, which has bolstered his fantasy standing.
• Rodgers has been the king of efficient quarterback play since he became the Packers' starter and it's entirely possible he's able to continue his high level of play without Adams
• However, there are enough red flags and outside circumstances that make it unlikely. Fantasy managers are best treating Rodgers as a very safe high-end QB2.