Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady have both been around the NFL long enough that they are running low on new things to experience in the professional ranks.
One of the few things left on each man’s list will get checked off on Sunday when Brady and the Patriots hit Lambeau Field to face the Packers. Brady and Rodgers have never started the same game, adding some intrigue to a game that already had plenty by pitting the two hottest teams in football against each other.
Rodgers, who missed a 2010 matchup with the Patriots because of injury, is focusing on the team part of things this week instead of on his matchup with a player who won’t be on the field at the same time or the lack of a foil like Peyton Manning has been to Brady over the years.
“I have a ton of respect for them in their careers, but again I don’t ever look at it like it’s one quarterback against another. It takes 11 every single play to be effective. We play against some great teams in the NFC all the time. They’ve spent their careers in the AFC and that’s kind of the way it’s gone,” Rodgers said on his ESPN Milwaukee radio show. “I’d like to think that at some point by the end of my career, I’ll have a number of matchups against a quarterback in the NFC who they like, much in the way that they like Brady and Manning, and they can make some comparison there, but I won’t have any void from not playing those guys. I’d rather not; they’re great players.”
Rodgers is right about it being 11-on-11 obviously, but it’s a quarterback-driven league and the fact that we’ve never seen Brady and Rodgers in the same game means that it’s an angle that will get played heavily between now and Sunday’s kickoff. And the accompanying noise will only grow should the teams remain hot and force a second meeting that comes much quicker than the first.