You will like LaFleur. There is a reason he doesn’t want his QB’s to audible. I’m a Falcons fan and remember our fan base being upset when Shannahan did this to Ryan.
First & Foremost, your offense will be fast paced and rarely huddle. You’ll get to the LOS with 20 seconds left on the play clock. The mic in Rodgers ear won’t shut off until 14 seconds so LaFleur can make the audibles at the LOS in most situations. Inside the RZ, Rodgers should have authority to audible.
Much of LaFleur’s offense involves pre-snap activity, including extensive use of motion. By the time the protection is set and the eligibles motion, there simply may not be enough time to find the “best” play to run.
Secondly, it’s about play sequencing in this offense. Rodgers audibled at the LOS on 35% of plays last year. That doesn’t work in this offense. Each play has a purpose that Rodgers may not see.
Personnel groupings and plays are run in order to set up something else down line or try to get the defense to show its cards. On its face, the play may or may not be ideal in a specific situation, but it may also allow Rodgers, LaFleur, et al to exploit a look later on.
Your second and third paragraphs seem to contradict each other. On the one hand you say LaFleur can make the audibles pres-nap but on the other hand there is not enough time do so.
In any case, there are the other kinds of audibles even when the QB keeps his mouth shut. The QB may not like the call to start with; there are about 2.5 seconds post snap for him to be convinced otherwise. Already predisposed to not like what he's given, convicing is not the likely outcome, leading to the extended play.
A primary reason to use motion is to see how the defense reacts in order to identity the coverage, man or zone being a prime example of what motion is intended to expose. What's the point if time has run to short to alter the call? It's another kind of silent audible, the QB changing the progression in his head when the situation dictates based on that defensive reaction. Or he could go playground as with one of those Adams hand signals followed by QB recognition, or visa versa, based on what the defense presents.
A QB who just takes what he's given, suspends all disbelief, with a good arm and a mind for rote learning, while being barred from exercising and developining whatever imagination he's capable of, gets you a robo-QB. Has one of those guys won a Super Bowl? Is Tom Brady a robo-QB? I'd say "no" and "no". I might have given Goff short shrift in the past calling him a robo-QB. Looking now at his time to throw matching Rodgers', his ad libbing is probably pretty frequent. The Rams might win something with him. In any case, the idea that LaFluer will have "an answer for everything" as the story goes didn't play out for his mentor as the Rams were stymied by a good but not great New England defense. McVay was outcoached.
This robo-QB model makes a lot of sense in college football where boy starting QBs come and go like the wind as eligibility expires or a first round pick looms before they ever acquire the skills to take control of an offense. It makes sense in the NFL with inexperienced QBs.
It's kind of interesting that LaFluer recently conceded that he may send in an audible play along with the called play. If the All Pro offensive tackle Joe Thomas is to be believed, and I've heard it said by others, sending in two plays is standard operating procedure in the NFL, a run audible to go with a pass call and visa versa. Not doing so stikes me as an over-controlling approach which a QB of these abilities, yet that was evidently his default approach coming in. Without adaptability on LaFleur's part, it looks like hubris.
And in the end, it doesn't appear Rodgers is going to put up with this kind of control. Trade Rodgers! The contract makes that impossible. So, what's LaFleur going to do about it? Bang his head against the wall? Or show flexibility and adaptation.
It's like we're talking about some mediocrity at QB who goes off the reservation. You know, as recently as 2016, Rodgers was third in MVP voting. When you set aside the stats (htough his were awfully good) and focus on the "valuable", he arguably should have won that award, strapping this team to his back and carrying them to the playoffs with a roster that was not particularly good.
Ryan didn't win the prize. The Rams havn't, at leat not yet. Brees overrides plays in the huddle with regularity we've come to learn, and he's won a Super Bowl; who knows if one fluke play and another non-interference call had gone the other way.
The only things I worry or wonder about with Rodgers are:
1) Will his recent injuries, the plate that still sits in that throwing shoulder and a residual knee injury with surgery foregone, show up in reduction of physical skills. And if that is the case, will he acknowledge the facts and make the mental adjustments to reduced skills.
2) In the back of my mind I sometimes wonder if he's gone a little loopy. UFO sightings? Game of Thrones obsession? Maybe he's always been that way, off-field preoccupations partitioned off from football, and only recently more revelatory. I don't know. Just wondering. Will probably never know.
