LaFleur: Rodgers 'absolutely' has OK to audible - 4 minutes read


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GREEN BAY, Wis. -- A summer's worth of conjecture about whether Aaron Rodgers will be able to change plays at the line of scrimmage, as he has done for much of his career, appears to have been answered three days before the Green Bay Packers open the season against the Chicago Bears.

First-year coach Matt LaFleur said Monday that Rodgers will "absolutely" have permission to make whatever pre-snap adjustments the quarterback deems necessary to combat what the defense presents, especially when it comes to unscouted looks the Bears -- and future opponents -- might unveil that weren't in the Packers' advance work.

"We've given him all the freedom," LaFleur said. "So if he sees something, he's got 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."

This became a question not long after LaFleur was hired in January, and talk intensified before training camp opened in July.

LaFleur's offense, which is based on the Sean McVay-Kyle Shanahan system, does not historically contain many options at the line of scrimmage. Asked about that at the NFL scouting combine in February, LaFleur said, "We traditionally haven't had a whole lot of audibles, per se, in our offense. Not to say that that's going to be the way we're going forward because, again, we're going to build it our way. We try to give the quarterback as many tools as possible. There's going to be a lot of playcalls where there's two plays called."

LaFleur calls those "cans" -- as in, the quarterback "can" pick the other play.

Rodgers discussed the audible issue for an ESPN story that ran in July and said: "Some of that, you just have to figure out ultimately, but the most important thing is trust. It's a real, true trust. And I think it just comes from conversation, him understanding that I'm just trying to win, and I have to trust my instincts, and me trusting him, that he's calling what he thinks is the best play in that situation and that he needs me to make it work."

After the first practice of training camp this summer, Rodgers was asked jokingly how many audibles he called that day, and he said, tongue-in-cheek: "So many. So many. Thirty probably. That's a good number."

When asked if they were successful, Rodgers said: "Twenty-nine of them. One bad one."

Like most coaches, LaFleur works off a script of plays that he puts together with input from his coaches and starting quarterback. The question at this point is how much of his playbook are the players comfortable with?

Rodgers on Sunday referred to the game-planning process as both "creative" and "collaborative" between him and the coaching staff.

"I think it will be fun to kind of lay it out there on Thursday, work through the stuff that we've been working so hard on in practice and make teams that when they play in Green Bay, it's not just what they've seen for years -- which was tough to stop," Rodgers said.

"Now we're throwing new things at them with personnel groupings and motions and alignments and movement and adjustments that they haven't seen from us. So I'm excited for the opportunity. I'm obviously really hopeful that we're going to go out and play really well, but I do really feel like this is just the beginning for this offense, and there'll be a lot of room to grow regardless of our performance on Thursday. Which, for myself and our squad, I expect us to play really well. But I think there's going to be a lot of room for growth within the scheme as we go on in the season."