New on Sports Illustrated: Conference Championship Takeaways, the Senior Bowl & the Mailbag | The Albert Breer Show

What's it going to take for the Packers to kick it into a higher gear next year? How is Super Bowl LV's match up looking? Plus Breer answers your questions and much more.

Albert Breer breaks down how Tom Brady elevated the rest of the Buccaneers on Sunday despite throwing three interceptions, the meaning of Aaron Rodgers's postgame comments, how Patrick Mahomes has taken yet another leap forward, why the Bills are far from a one-and-done contending team, and why the bar has risen for what teams need at the quarterback position. We also talk to Senior Bowl executive Jim Nagy about how they put together a safe environment during the COVID-19 pandemic and what teams will be looking for during this years game. We wrap things up by giving our parting thoughts to the losing teams from this years conference championship games with SI's fantasy analyst Michael Fabiano, and of course, the mailbag.

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Albert Breer: Takeaway number two. Do I think the Green Bay Packers are going to trade Aaron Rodgers? No. Do I think Aaron Rodgers 100%, absolutely, positively, without a doubt, knew what he was doing when he said what he said on the postgame Zoom on Sunday? Yes. I think what Aaron Rodgers is doing here, he's dipping his toe in the water. He's very self-aware. He's dipping his toe in the water, he's trying to figure out exactly what buttons to push. And I think he's got enough experience to sort of know where he can go with this. And I think as much as anything else, it's a message to the front office. Be aggressive, get me some help, put me in a position to compete, let's work with a two-year window. And he's been part of an organization for a long time that's always had this like really solid long-range planning. And they haven't always acted with the most urgency. Now, that's changed a little bit with Brian Gutekunst, he went out and he signed Preston Smith, he signed Adrian Amos, he signed Za'Darius Smith during the 2019 offseason.

I think what you see from Rodgers right now, is sort of a looking around at the landscape, and seeing how aggressive the Chiefs were with Patrick Mahomes as their quarterback and seeing how aggressive the Bucs were, and how the Bucs at every turn—the team that beat them on Sunday—were picking somebody else up, whether it was Leonard Fournette or Shady McCoy or Rob Gronkowski. It was not like those were seismic moves, but those were moves of aggression, those are moves of: We are going to do whatever it takes to win right now, this year, period. We are going to do what it takes to put the best team around our quarterback. We are going to do whatever it takes to get the most out of our older quarterback. And I think that's what Aaron Rodgers is asking for. 

Now, he's not blameless. I thought it was poor form to some degree that he said, it's not my decision on the Matt LaFleur decision on fourth down, because on third down, I think you can question his decision making. I think he could have gotten in the end zone on that play or at the very least made it a more manageable fourth down to try and go for. So again, I just think it's complicated. The Packers-Rogers relationship has been complicated for a while. I think the coaching change cleaned it up a little bit, but there's still that piece there and I think that Rodgers is very much exerting leverage right now. 

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