New & Improved

Win the battle but lose the war. That was the case for the Packers in 2018 after a gimpy Aaron Rodgers led a thrilling comeback victory against the upstart Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field.

The Bears lost the battle, but they’d also win the win the NFC North war.

This year, Rodgers and the offense will look to regain its traction as one of the most-feared offensive operations in football, and it starts with a complete schematic overhaul thanks to the hiring of head coach Matt LaFleur.

The offense’s Shanahan-McVay roots will introduce shifts, motions and bunch formations in spades. And though it’s all new for No. 12 and the other 10 starters on the field, Rodgers said he expects to hit the ground running on Thursday in Chicago.

“It’s so new and so different than what we’ve done in the past,” Rodgers said, according to Packers.com. “It’ll be fun to lay it out there Thursday and work through the stuff we’ve been working hard on in practice. And make teams, when they play in Green Bay, it’s not just what they’ve seen for years. We’re throwing different stuff at them.”

During Mike McCarthy’s final few seasons in Green Bay, the offense would slowly, but consistently, atrophy. The head coach and the quarterback never seemed to be on the same page, and even when the offense was producing, it always looked like a hardscrabble effort relative to other teams around the league.

Still, what we see on Thursday, Rodgers stressed, is merely the offense in its infancy, and that it should grow and improve throughout the season.

“Everyone needs to understand that this is the first iteration of our offense, and because it’s a new scheme and there are new pieces this is going to grow from this point,” Rodgers said. “I’m excited about the stuff that we have in. I like the foundational start for this offense. It can be very tough to stop because of the stress it puts on defenses with their eye control, pattern reading, reading the alignments. But we have a lot of room to grow with what we put on the field on Thursday.”

Part of that growth could be how the offense operates at the line of scrimmage. Much of the offseason hullabaloo centered on whether or not Rodgers and LaFleur would be on the same page with changing plays.

If Monday’s press conference is any indication, don’t worry about it:

“We’ve given him all the freedom,” LaFleur said. “If he sees something, he has the green light to do whatever he needs to do to get us into a good play. We’re not going to take that from him.”

As a 15-year vet, Rodgers sees the field with the best of them. If there’s been any point of friction from LaFleur, it’s about the offense as a whole getting in and out of the huddle, not whether his quarterback can alter plays at the line of scrimmage. To that point, Rodgers said he expects unscouted looks 30 to 40 percent of the time, which underscores the importance to be flexible.

Back in June, LaFleur dispelled the notion that Rodgers wouldn’t be able to leverage his deep Rolodex of football knowledge to get the team into a better play. However, LaFleur did allude to the healthy amount of pre-snap window dressing which can take time off the play clock, which can complicate just how much an operation of 11 moving parts can accomplish within a limited time frame.

“We move a lot more,” LaFleur told NFL.com’s Mike Silver in June. “There’s a lot more motion. There are a lot more moving parts. And so if you just let the quarterback have that freedom to just get to whatever, I’m afraid it would slow our guys down. Now, he is a special talent and he’s got an incredible mind, so as we move forward throughout this process he’s getting more freedom. It’s just, where is that happy medium?”

So while he has a green light, Rodgers, who called this week’s game-planning process “highly collaborative,” will have to find the harmony between the designed play calls and what can easily be changed without abusing the play clock, a point of emphasis during training camp LaFleur will want Rodgers to manage efficiently.