Ah, preseason Packer football.  There’s really nothing like it.  It’s that special time of the season with circus-like training camp practices, DVR’ing games without that much guilt, and hearing Rich Gannnon say “ath-uh-letic” again.  And again.

Yes, Gannon and Kevin Harlan are the preseason announcers that make us appreciate the regular season announcers Wayne Larivee and Larry McCarren all the more, offing little nuggets of humor, such as letting us know periphery players are “on the fence”, as if they now have a choice of whether they want to make the Final 53 or not.

But one thing that Gannon stated stuck with me.  He said that Aaron Rodgers was “a very instinctive player”, who “knows exactly where the pressure is coming from in the pocket.”  This followed a play on the Packers’ second drive where QB1 scrambled for a first down.  Did I doubt his words?  No, but it made me think back to a time when I heard someone say that Rodgers lacked those exact skills.

Oh, wait, that was me.

But, from the limited times we’ve seen Aaron Rodgers, especially in his first two seasons, he has demonstrated the pressure awareness of a rock. Not only did this result in several fumbles in the 2006 Ravens game, it doesn’t bode well for keeping him healthy if this proves to be a chronic condition. While we only got a little bit of game film on him last year at Dallas, it seems like he’s made some progress in knowing where the pressure was coming from.

Many of us tend to forget Rodgers’ first couple of years in the league, playing behind He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-But-Can-Apparently-Be-Impersonated.  Now, in those days, pre-FavreGate, I was big supporter of Brett, but I was also a big supporter of Rodgers not getting thrown to the dogs until he was ready.  We had seen so many cases of players like David Carr, Alex Smith, and Akili Smith having their careers destroyed by starting as a rookie with nothing around them.

And like it or not, what worried me most about Rodgers was exactly what Gannon praised him for last week:  his instincts and pressure awareness.  I am prone to agree with him, despite his tones of over-adulation, that Rodgers has indeed evolved from those dangerous days.  Rodgers has learned his lesson and improved in an area that is, perhaps, one of the most impossible to improve in.

I mean, you’ve been playing football your whole life.  If you aren’t aware of what’s happening around you coming out of college, the speed of the NFL game is going to drown you.  Rodgers likely benefited greatly at spending a few years on the bench, waiting for his instincts to catch up to an NFL pass rush.  I don’t know if he would have survived 2005 and 2006 if he had been thrust into the starting position.

In our memories, we block out those early years of Aaron going back in the pocket, pitter-pattering around with his happy feet, then getting leveled blindside by a rusher he didn’t see coming.  We don’t remember the number of times he fumbled on those hits, either.  I remember cringing when he would scramble out of the pocket and not see the tackler coming in to try and remove his head from the rest of his body.  Hey…I try and block those memories out, too.

This isn’t an indictment of Rodgers.  In fact, its high praise for a quarterback whose career probably would have been as memorable as Tim Couch's had he played a few games behind Wil Whittaker and Adrian Klemm in those early years.  He wasn’t ready, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t  worried if he had shaken those demons when he took his spot under center.

But it is also praise for Ted Thompson, as I wrote back in 2007.

My usual disdain for Ted Thompson aside, I have to not-even-begrudgingly acknowledge that, now that it's evident he is doing a all-out rebuild (not a "reload" or a "revamp"), he is doing it the right way. Yes, Ted Thompson is rebuilding this team the right way. You heard me say it.

When you rebuild a team, you do NOT start with the quarterback. Ask Tim Couch, David Carr, Steve Young, and Akili Smith how they felt about being the "first piece of the puzzle", while waiting for the team around them to eventually be put in place. Not a very high success rate. To do it right, you start with the lines, both offensive and defense, and work on the rest of the defense first. Next, as the offensive line gels, you work on the running and receiving game.

In fact, I postulated in that same piece that it was not Brett who had the upper hand in the storied Thompson/Favre relationship, but Ted himself was keeping Brett around to take the hits surrounded by a very young offense, only to be jettisoned when Thompson felt Rodgers (and his supporting cast) was ready.  Prophetic, wasn’t it?

We could see the growth of Aaron Rodgers, even in that Dallas Cowboy game in 2007 when he came in for an injured Favre and showed us a glimpse of the future with short, precise passes.  But, he also missed several blitz pickups that let us know he still had some growing to do.  It was enough for Thompson, who felt his boy was ready and, as I predicted, moved on.

In 2008,  a star-crossed year for the entire team, Rodgers entered the starting spot and had a pretty good year overall.  What is often missed in that first season is that Rodgers finished with the 98^th highest number of pass attempts by any quarterback in NFL history, and the number of sacks in that season and the first part of 2009 were also among historical rates.  Those aren't the superlatives you are looking for in your first year as a starter, particularly one where you've gone 6-10. Yes, he was showing that pin-point accuracy (and the Packers trusted him to keep throwing it), but the pressure awareness and being able to get rid of the ball was racking up the hits he was taking behind the line of scrimmage.

In the latter half of 2009, we saw a different Aaron Rodgers.  The Tampa Bay Debacle was a crossroads for the entire team, and according to quarterback Tom Clements, Rodgers actually started taking more risks.  "What I told him is you want to be disciplined in what you're doing, but you want to be opportunistic,” said Clements.  “So if there's a chance for a big play, be aggressive, be opportunistic but make sure the odds are in our favor. Otherwise, just go through your progression, take what's open and wait until you have the chance to make a play."

This was a sea change for Rodgers, who seemingly had been so focused on being the anti-Favre that he swung the pendulum too far the other way:  taking only safe throws and avoiding the interception at all costs.  When he was unleashed, we saw the precise lasers not only downfield, but being put on a dime amidst heavy coverage.

But in order to do this, he had to use that time in the pocket wisely, and he reduced his sacked total from 37 over the first eight games to just 13 over the last eight.  You saw him starting to move the pocket, looking for opportunities downfield and not being afraid to take them.

He stopped being afraid to make a mistake.  He started doing what it took to be an NFL starting quarterback, and from then on, his potential began to be realized instead of stifled by always looking for the safe way out (eating the ball and taking a hit being a “safe way out”).  Scarily enough, making something happen downfield and avoiding the sack was something we had claimed we never wanted to see again.  Yet, Rodgers was able to make it happen without increasing his interception total.

Last year, Rodgers’ sack total fell to 37 on the whole year, and he came into his own as a complete quarterback.  But he had his own personal Come-To-Jesus moment, when he had to come to grips with his own career mortality.  Two concussions led to missed time (and a missed start) for Rodgers, who got a crash course on the impact of head injuries to a quarterback’s career.

The first concussion likely came on a helmet-to-helmet hit on his last pass of the game against the Redskins, an interception.  The second came on a scramble against the Lions when two tacklers awkwardly sent his head crashing into the turf.  When he came back from that second concussion, you saw an even wiser Rodgers ducking down on his scrambles when a tackler got close to him (much to the approval of the Lambeau crowd, who cheered).

So, when we reach this point of the 2011 preseason, where a prognosticator praises Aaron Rodgers for his exceptional awareness and pocket presence, it really is a testament to many factors that have allowed QB1 to mature into that kind of player.  It wasn’t easy, and he had some help, from sitting on the bench early on, to facing his own mortality from head injuries.

In the end, Favre’s presence and a couple of concussions may have helped contribute to Aaron Rodgers developing into the most complete and dynamic quarterback the Packers have ever had.