Im 23 and while I remember watching the packers that year, I don’t recall any narratives that were taking place at that time.
It’s clear that Rodgers first year was received pretty well by our fandom (maybe except the Favre camp), but clearly he wasn’t perfect. We went 6-10 and Rodgers stats, while good, weren’t shouting “guaranteed HoFer”
So what were the major critiques of Rodgers game? Did he share Loves sometimes iffy deep ball accuracy? Was it decision making? Playing too much hero ball? Judging by his stats game to game, he seems different from Love so far in that he to give you something to be optimistic about every game, but has a lot of “ok” games. Love on the other hand often either plays really good or pretty bad.
Rodgers held the ball too long. He couldn’t come back against any good teams. Wasn’t/couldn’t win a big game. The standard stuff for new qbs in the league.
Right out of the gate he didn’t turn the ball over like Favre, for that alone, half the Packers fan base was on board with the guy.
Anyone who says they weren’t a believer was probably a Favre apologist. The Packer were also a different franchise then. Before Favre there was nearly thirty years of bad teams, a lot, and I mean a lot of people in the city of green bay were worried a downfall was coming again and that was why Favre was wanted by a lot of fans. As the season progressed and Favre had his typical(at the time, he would get good again Minnesota) playing through injuries and turning the ball over a lot season, more fans were won over by Rodgers.
To quote myself in 2008, “When Aaron throws a deep ball and on the television copy you can’t see the guy he’s throwing to, in that moment when ball is in the air, you expect our guy to be on the other side and catch it. When it was Favre and that ball was in the air, you were just hoping it wasn’t picked.” That was the big difference in my eyes.