Yeah that's fair. The point is that he wasn't playing particularly well. Basically from from 2015 to 2019, he was an above average QB, but not elite. He was certainly good enough that you'd want him on your team, but probably not good enough to return value on a huge cap number. He came out to about a 97.0 Passer Rating over that span, which was what Philip Rivers produced for the Colts last year.
Now I totally blame McCarthy's offense and Rodgers' bad habits within that offense-- not his actual ability-- for those disappointing returns.
But now that he bought into LaFleur's offense and returned to MVP form, people seem to think that no matter where he goes, he would just set the league on fire. Recent history tells us that that simply isn't true. The situation clearly matters for him to reach his potential.
But I guess the narrative that he'd be amazing anywhere isn't surprising, since so many people seem to think he has no help around him in Green Bay (help, like a top 5 OL, great running game, elite WR, and one of the most QB friendly offenses in football... that kind of help).
I think the original point was that Rodgers could make almost any team a non-losing team (8-8 or better). And he's managed to do that every season since his 2nd year in the league until now, with the exception of 2018. So Rodgers' passer rating in 2017 is actually immaterial due to winning games, but I'll bite.
Rodgers has been known to start off some of even his best seasons poorly (by his standards) but then he starts to ramp it up.
2017 is a perfect example of that. Sub-100 passer rating games in the first two, but then in week 3 against Cincy, had a rating above 100 and threw the winning throw in overtime to Geronimo to get into chip shot field goal range to win the game. Next week against the Bears, total demolition. 128 rating with 4 TD's. Next week against the Cowboys, had pedestrian yardage #'s due to the limited possessions in the game, and because Aaron Jones was running wild. But still, 3 TD's and the game winning TD to Davante in the corner of the end zone. 123 rating. QBR's all mid 70's or above.
Anyone with fair eyes that evaluate Rodgers' 2017 season could at least look at the numbers and understand that they were trending in the right direction with three excellent games leading up to the injury.
2018 was the outlier. And I'm not going to excuse Rodgers' play. For whatever reason, he just wasn't near as good as he has been in years past. I'm sure the knee injury played into that some, but not going to use that as an excuse for what was a pedestrian season by his standards.
Point is though, Rodgers could walk into a lot of situations and win more than 7 games.
For the record, I give LaFleur a ton of credit for Rodgers' resurgence. You won't ever see me try to argue otherwise. I've been saying it for a while, this return to high level winning is a product of two men. LaFleur and Rodgers. And the team as followed their lead.