I think about shoulders a lot. (Bear with me.) What would you say made humans the dominant species on the planet Earth? (I said, bear with me.) Is it our big brains, allowing us the use of language to pass down technology and culture? Sure, but before that. Is it our bipedal stance and top-notch thermoregulation, allowing us to endlessly chase down prey across miles of savannah? Yes, but even more primitive than that. It is, I submit, our shoulders, those ball-and-socket joints exquisitely crafted to throw things at other things, that gave us the edge that allowed us to go from clever apes to peerless hunters. Our soft, squishy bodies were no match to go toe-to-toe with beasts with claws or teeth or horns. But thanks to our shoulders, a miracle of evolution, we could throw things at them from a safe distance. With this edge, we summited the food chain. It's no exaggeration to say our shoulders are what make humans human.
So what do you say about a shoulder that can throw a 14-ounce football 70 yards in the air without seeming to make an effort, other than goddamn? At its peak, Aaron Rodgers's shoulder was the pinnacle of human athleticism.
Rodgers played the best quarterback I've ever seen in my life. I'm not saying he was the best quarterback, but at his best he was doing things rarely seen on a football field before or since, and with some regularity. This isn't recency bias talking, or bias of any kind, because I hate his guts. His was a combination of ruthlessness, game sense, and mechanical precision that added up a quarterback capable of making any throw at any time. He was willing to try, too, to force throws that looked like they had no business getting through solid defending. His low interception rates testify to his decision-making, a distinct departure from the reckless "gunslinger" who preceded him in Green Bay—if he didn't have anything, he'd grumpily throw the ball away, but if he thought he had something, he probably had something.
If the technicolor memories are currently the ones of a decaying Rodgers getting the tar whacked out of him in his flaccid journeyman phase, go watch some highlights and that'll change. I remember vividly the two specific throws that convinced me I was watching the position being played as optimally as it could be. Neither is necessarily "spectacular." 2014, the "Relax" season, a casual-looking concrete rope of a pass (the first play here), delivered by his upper body alone, that came within an inch or two of the cornerback's fingertips but could only have been caught by the intended receiver. 2015, the year of his Hail Marys, again throwing across his body as his momentum tried and failed to peel off velocity, perfectly potting the ball between two defenders in close coverage.
That's what I think I'll remember best about Rodgers's play: It's as if it didn't matter what his lower body was doing. Falling away from the throw, facing the wrong way, running for his life—he had the arm strength and the accuracy to put a laser through a keyhole anyway.
I don't know if we saw Rodgers play his final NFL game last night. I don't know if he'll catch on somewhere next year, or if he'll finally get the hints that time itself has been sending him and decide to retire, or if his inner life is so bankrupt he'll desperately keep trying to play and force every team to reject him for no longer being good enough to be this exhausting. It doesn't matter, really. It hasn't mattered for a while. The quarterback capable of those feats doesn't exist anymore, because that's the direction aging goes. Even that increasingly decrepit quarterback has been eclipsed by Aaron Rodgers the person, who sucks. But those throws, man. Those throws. The point of this post isn't pure nostalgia, I swear, or about separating art from artist; it's a reminder that primes are short and greatness is fleeting and legacies can be ruined faster than they're made. Say "Aaron Rodgers" now and I won't first remember those throws. But I'll remember remembering them, and that counts for something.
