Aaron Rodgers quieted a lot of doubters on Sunday after throwing four touchdown passes in a season-opening win. One of his doubters acknowledged that Rodgers played a role in Pittsburgh’s win, but he also thinks it was more of a fluke than anything else.
“The reason why the Pittsburgh Steelers won that game was because Xavier Gipson decided he was gonna fumble a kickoff,” Chris Canty said Monday on ESPN’s Unsportsmanlike. “That’s it. It came down to that fumble, a fluky DK Metcalf catch, to set up Chris Boswell hitting a career-long 60-yard field goal.”
Sure, some things did have to go right for the Steelers to pull out a win yesterday. But in that sense, welcome to the NFL. That’s how games are won and lost, and the fumble on the kick return was a significant turning point. The Steelers were down 26-17, but after a touchdown, the fumble recovery and another touchdown, they jumped out to a 31-26 lead in the blink of an eye.
Gipson made a big mistake there, but it’s not like the Steelers didn’t have to earn the win. Kenneth Gainwell did a terrific job of forcing the fumble. Moments later, Aaron Rodgers threw a beautiful ball to Calvin Austin III to give the Steelers the lead. Rodgers took advantage of the opportunity provided to him and should get credit for that.
Canty gives Rodgers some small praise for getting revenge against New York. However, he wasn’t entirely happy with Rodgers’ postgame comments.
“He enacted his revenge on the Jets, credit to him,” Canty said. “His postgame comments tell me that [this] is his Super Bowl for the season. Now, do I expect that Aaron Rodgers is going to be able to play that way throughout the entirety of the season? I do not.”
Canty is referring to comments in which Rodgers said he was happy to beat everyone associated with the Jets. It was a slight dig at his former team, but that’s really the only time he’s taken a shot like that at his former team. In the lead-up to the game, Rodgers had a lot of praise for some of his former Jets teammates. Football is an emotional game, and if you really think his postgame comments were too much, fine. But it’s not as if Rodgers talked this game up all last week. In fact, it was closer to the opposite.
Throughout the offseason, Canty was not shy about criticizing Aaron Rodgers. He was wrong in Week 1. It sounds like he’s sticking to that opinion despite that. We’ll see if Rodgers can continue to prove him wrong as the season goes on.
