John Kuhn, Former Green Bay Packers Fullback

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On the Odyssey app or wherever you listen to your podcast. need to get their reps cut. I interpret that as that's a message and an order kind of to Matt LaFleur. Where do you think their relationship is at right now?

I would say they're probably on the same page. I'll be honest with you. I remember talking with you two years ago, I believe it was, or a little over a year ago and we were kind of trying to project.

What's the chances Aaron Rodgers comes back to the Green Bay Packers? And this was last summer and we had the conversations and what Aaron's like and what Aaron wants and what Aaron needs and it was the communication. It was always communication.

It was always to be a part of the answer when answers need to be had. And now within the last year, 18 months, you've got to see a relationship between he and Matt LaFleur. He and Brian Gooding could mature and develop and turn into something where quite frankly, they have been on the same page for quite some time.

I truly believe that if this is something Aaron Rodgers is saying in the public, this is something Aaron Rodgers and Matt LaFleur had conversations about, probably not this week, probably not last week, probably the last month, month and a half of the season. Do you think there will be any changes? Do you think we'll see anything drastically different this week up against Buffalo? Well, you know, they're banged with an injury bug right now.

So what's going to happen? Where is Alan Lazard sitting? How is Christian Watson?

Is he going to come back? David Bakhtiari, that was the shock of the Midwest world last week when he suddenly had to miss the game after practicing all week long. They're all offenses in a state of flux right now. Randall Cobb is on IR.

So it's not like they can just start plugging players here, right? So I don't know how drastic the changes are, but when Aaron says shave some reps, and I believe he means that when it's the money down, when it's third down, he needs guys that he can trust. They're going to go in there and run the play exactly the way that it needs to be run. Now, I'm not supporting Aaron Rodgers just because he's my friend or anything, but I can tell you Zach, this offense has been shaky at best. It has not looked clean. They have hardly gotten into a rhythm.

I'd say in seven games, Zach, they could probably add up enough quarters where they've been in a rhythm to make a game and a half. That's how bad the offense has been this year for the Green Bay Packers. How much blame does he get for that? Because a lot of people, they hear the reps conversation and everyone knows no one is going to see Aaron Rodgers get his reps cut, but they go, maybe he needs to get some of the blame too. Well, he definitely deserves a bit of the blame, and I don't think Aaron Rodgers would shy away if somebody would directly ask him that question.

But I want to be specific about what Aaron Rodgers said yesterday and what got everybody all excited. It was talking about mental errors or missed assignments, and that's something that takes place because of the time you put in, the work that you put in. This has nothing to do with getting beat physically by your opponent. Everybody in the National Football League understands that the other team gets paid too, and you're going to lose from time to time.

Everybody also understands that to play a position in the National Football League, it's physically challenging. So sometimes you're not going to be able to physically withstand it or live up to what you need to do. In those moments, there are 70 plays in a game, you're going to lose a handful of those. But it shouldn't be because you weren't prepared.

It shouldn't be because you didn't know what to do, and it shouldn't be because you forgot the timing of a route or a blocking combination or something to that nature. So that's all Aaron Rodgers is simply trying to say in that aspect. I think most professional athletes, especially on a team sport, if their guys are giving them 100%, and their guys are doing what they're coached to do, and they're living up to what the expectations were going into the game, and you get beat by an opponent, most people can live with that.

What you can't live with is repeated mistakes by what we used to call repeated violators, people that would make the same mistakes over and over. And I believe that's what Aaron Rodgers is speaking to. As far as him himself and the blame that he deserves, yeah, he has not been as sharp with his passes as he's been in years past.

I've specifically noticed it in London. It was a little bit of a lag at the beginning of the season. A lot of us considered those first four games to be maybe a pre-season, so to speak, of the regular season. But once you hit about week four, week five, and London, he was missing on some of his outside passes, passes outside the numbers, which came to a shock to me. That's what happens when you get a little bit of a pass rush in your face consistently week after week after week. And I think Aaron Rodgers got a little bit happy for you, and I think his technique slipped him a little bit. But I saw that technique come back this week at Washington. I thought it was one of his better games that he had played so far this season. So I think Aaron Rodgers is trying to do the necessary things. I think he just wants his teammates to continue to do the same things that he's doing, which is trying to master their craft.

John Coon here with us on the Zach Gelb show. You could tell me if I'm wrong for saying this. I don't see how the Packers win this week. I know it could be any given Sunday, and you still have Rodgers, but going to Buffalo and trying to win a game there is going to be tough for any team these days. So if they get to three and five, and the Vikings right now are five and one, you start to think, OK, maybe that NFC North is not going to go their way. How do you think, John Coon, we're going to be talking about the Packers at the end of this regular season? Where will they be at in your opinion?

Boy, I don't know, Zach, and that's the scariest thing. This is the earliest within a season. I would have to go back to about 2018. We felt like the team was on shaky ground. 2017, you had the injury with Aaron Rodgers. 2016 was the last time they made the playoffs. And about this point in time in the season, you could have flipped the coin and guessed whether they would make the playoffs or not.

I don't know. I don't know what this football team. To me, this defense is good enough that they can not only make the playoffs, but they can make a run. I feel like our defense, they come out, they fight, they have necessary adjustments. They know what they're doing in a run game.

They can keep up with players in the past game. But once they get to the second half, and they're just slogging along, trying to battle and keep this team in a football game, the adjustments start getting made by the opposing offenses, and they start leaning on them, and they start getting worn out. This last game, the Washington commanders had more than 20 plays offensively, more than 20 plays than the Green Bay Packers. That wears on the defense. I think this defense is good enough. The offense, I just don't know. I don't know if they're good enough to get to the playoffs this year. And you ask me, do they have a chance this weekend? Well, I'll give you the cliche any given Sunday, but I can remember exactly a year to the week last year when the Packers were going into Arizona without Devonte Adams, without Marquess Valdez Scantling, without Jair Alexander, and the Arizona Cardinals were 7-0 on a Thursday night game, and nobody gave the Packers a chance down. I said, oh, there's a path to victory. Zach, I'm grinding on this film looking for a path to victory this week and for the Green Bay Packers, and I'm struggling to find one. So just hear me out here.

This is a theory that I had, and I'm sure you're probably telling me that I'm wrong with what you said earlier. With the comments last week about simplifying in the offense, the comment about the mental mistakes this week in cutting reps, I think there's some frustration there with Rodgers and Matt LaFleur. Is there any chance this year in the offseason with especially that contract, the way it's structured, where the dead cap is, where it would really kill the Packers if Rodgers retired after this year, that Rodgers goes to Gudakunz and say, we need a new voice at the head coach.

Is there any remote chance of that happening this offseason? If you told me Aaron Rodgers was frustrated with the game plan, I could probably buy into that. If you told me Aaron Rodgers was frustrated with Matt LaFleur, and I know it kind of goes hand in hand, I can't, I don't see it. Their relationship is too good right now. They're communicating, they're doing all the necessary things that a quarterback is the leader of the football team and the coach, the head coach is the leader of the football team, need to do in order to coexist.

I do not believe there's friction between the two of them. But it's clear the game plans that they're unveiling for these regular season games, they're just not up to snuck. Whether it's a focus in the run game, where it's an attention to detail at practice, whether they need to lean more on run it runs and get out of the RPO game.

There's so many different things that this could be. And yet all we ever seem to hear from Matt LaFleur and some of the players is we need to execute better. Listen, I know the Packers are among the league leaders, depending on the website you look at, they got between 15 and 17 drops, which would be a top two in the National Football League. But this offense doesn't look right, it's not clicking. In years past, they would lean on that run game, Aaron Rodgers would set them up, get a big play down the field and that's how they'd get rolling.

I haven't really seen that, but maybe one or two times this year, Zach. When it gets to adding people in season, it's always tricky and you really have a week left to do it. I know Adele's different because he's a free agent. I feel like John Kuhn every year, we say the Packers need to go get another guy, the Packers need to go get another guy. Can you even expect them to go get another guy at this point?

I mean, I anticipate something happening. I pray that maybe the phone rings one of these times and it's not somebody asking me to do a podcast so they can rag on Aaron and I can defend him or whatever. I pray that one of these times the phone rings, it's simply, hey, the Packers traded for Chase Claypool or the Packers traded for Elijah Moore. Or the Packers traded for, I pray it happens, Zach, because if it doesn't, I don't see how they pull themselves out of this hole, I just don't. It's daunting right now and the offense just doesn't look like it has to be players to spread the ball around enough. Because it's clear and evident that Matt LaFlore in his efforts to try and save Aaron Jones for the end of the season, never wants to give him the ball more than 20 times in a game.

John Kuhn here with us. So other than Rodgers, cuz I know that's been the majority of our conversation, the Bucks are also struggling. Do you see a path for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to turn things around? Yeah, I mean, they have a clearer path than the Green Bay Packers to the extent that their division is in disarray, the Atlanta Falcons are tied with them and they hold the tiebreaker cuz they beat them once. Atlanta is basically running an old school run at all fence, whether you call it Navy, Army, or the Winx.

I don't know what they're running up there, but it's just keep the ball on the ground and keep it out of the hands of the posing defense. The Saints can't get jump started because their quarterbacks are both hurt and they're both struggling. So their division is so up in the air. And who would have guessed in just two short years that the NFC South would have turned into the NFC East and vice versa and they would have changed places. It's wild to watch, but I think the Buccaneers have an edge there. Tom Brady has an edge there just because their division is so topsy turvy. I will say if Tampa doesn't win that division though, the Packers hold a tiebreaker from head to head. So in that aspect, the Packers have a little bit of an edge in that one when it comes to the wild card because looking at this bills game, the Packers don't somehow hit lightning in the bottle and shocked the world this week. And they're going to be looking at probably a three and a half four game separation between them and the Vikings. How good do you think Minnesota is, by the way, the Vikings? Because they're five and one. I don't think they're as good as a five and one team. But your record says you are to some extent.

Yeah, I think you're good, not great, right? So there is Smith, no doubt. He went up there. He had a purpose. He had a vision.

He had some demons. He wanted to exercise from leaving Green Bay. And he's got that defense believing. They are playing better this year than what they were as a Mike Zimmer defense before. And that influx there of that Kyle Shanahan tree of coaches, where they use all that motion and they get everybody looking at different ways, that only opens it up even more for Kirk Cousins. If you give Kirk Cousins time and you give Kirk Cousins windows, Kirk Cousins is a very capable quarterback in this National Football League, as we have seen. He's got weapons all around him. He has time now.

He has receivers running open, and he's not going to miss it. Minnesota looks dangerous. I don't see them as one of the top tier teams when you're talking about the Philadelphia Eagles, when you're talking about, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but the Dallas Cowboys right now. It's kind of wild to look at the NFC because you got the Eagles.

And then you got everybody else. You got some teams trying to prove themselves. And then you got some teams that have been hanging around in the last few years that are all looking at each other, saying, which one of us is going to miss the party this year because all these new teams are a couple steps ahead of us. It could be the year that good not great finds a way to get to the Super Bowl out of the NFC, like in the AFC, I could only see Kansas City or Buffalo at this point.

In the NFC, I like Philadelphia the most, but if they get picked off and come out of a bye that we've seen from time to time happen, you know that. Maybe it's just the good team finds a way to get in and you don't have to be great this year. Yeah, it could be one of those years, right? We got the wild card in the National League going all the way to the World Series.

So you really just never know. That's what makes sports great. And that's really what we're looking at here in the NFC, because I'll agree with you Zach. I mean, you're around it.

You see it more every day. Philly looks like a juggernaut right now with the trade for Robert Quinn. They really look like the team that could, I mean, they are pushed every chip to the center rookie quarterback contract. And they said, we are taking on everybody we can right now.

It's our time. Where's Sean Payton, your old head football coach, coach of next year? I seem to think it's gonna be out there in LA.

I just have the feeling he loves it out there on that West Coast. He's got a young quarterback that he can mold. They've had questionable decision makings out there with the Chargers. Very questionable.

Some of the game management scenarios. And I can just see Sean Payton, which is the way he has taken Jason or Jamis Winston, you know, for a couple of years and kind of molded him back into a realistic starter national football league. What he did for Drew Brees or what Drew Brees did for him, I guess it's hand in hand. But there's no doubt that he can take a quarterback. He could take an offense and he can find ways to take it to the next level. I got a feeling it's gonna be LA next year for Sean Payton. And last thing I'll say to you, if you were a teammate John Kuhn of Russell Wilson right now, what would you say to him?

Cuz everything he's doing right now is so cringe worthy. And it seems like he's becoming one of the jokes in the NFL for a player that's so talented, but this has been a disaster in Denver. Well, see, and that's what trips me out about all the conversation and the conjecture that I have to partly debate when it comes to Aaron Rodgers. But I also listen to with Tom Brady cuz these are two guys. They do some questionable things, Aaron Rodgers missed the offseason program. Tom Brady went to a wedding, flew separately to an away game, took 10 days off in training camp. And then when they want to try and lead, when they want to try and coach, when they want to try and guide players and organizations, they're seen as the bad guys. You got Russell Wilson out there, I don't know what he's doing. I can tell you right now, from a player who's been in the locker room many, many years, he is the quarterback we'd all be looking at sideways.

What Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady do? Those are the guys we want to get behind and we want to follow their lead. John Coon, always great to have you on, it's been too long. We appreciate it. Maybe next time we have you on, it's something positive to talk about. No, we can find some positives. Give us two weeks. We got the lines after the bills.

I'll come back on after the last. You know what the positive is? It's Halloween coming up on Monday, and we probably both love candy. That's the positive right now.

There we go, Zach, a couple of big guys liking kids' food, yeah, no doubt. Thanks. I always enjoy talking with you. The Listening You Love is on the free Odyssey app. Your trusted local radio stations, coverage of your favorite teams, live news from your hometown, and millions of podcasts on demand. Best of all, you can completely customize your listening experience. Follow topics you care about, like leagues and teams, pause or rewind your local sports and news, and add shows to your queue to catch up later.

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You know me, I'll give you my unbiased opinion. A No Mercy episode drops every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. No Mercy with Stephen A. Smith, a presentation of Cadence 13, and Odyssey Studio, available on the Odyssey app or wherever you listen to your podcast. The Listening You Love is on the free Odyssey app. Your trusted local radio stations, coverage of your favorite teams, live news from your hometown, and millions of podcasts on demand. Best of all, you can completely customize your listening experience. Follow topics you care about, like leagues and teams, pause or rewind your local sports and news, and add shows to your queue to catch up later. There's a lot to listen to, so get started and download the free Odyssey app today.