Should Aaron Rodgers Throw It Deep?

Unlike when the Green Bay Packers had a different starting quarterback, I never cringe when QB Aaron Rodgers decides to throw it deep. His completion percentage is low, but it's a low risk/high reward play. And he's pretty good at it. Pro Football Focus crunches the numbers:

In numbers on their own (and this includes the playoffs) nobody threw downfield more often than Peyton Manning. His 95 throws of more than 20 yards trumped Joe Flacco and Aaron Rodgers (both with 86), while Matt Hasselbeck and Drew Brees (both 76) rounded out the top five. Most interesting is the fact that only one of these guys finished with a completion percentage of over 40% when going deep. We’ll get to that guy in a bit.

"That guy" mentioned above isn't Rodgers. Go click on the link if you're curious, and go click on it anyway because it's an interesting article. But give yourself a few minutes to read it because it looks at every quarterback, and there's a lot of detail to sift through.

The take away on Rodgers is that no one completed more passes thrown longer than 20 yards in 2010. He did while having the 10th best completion percentage on such throws. He was close to average on the percentage of times he threw it deep, and the percentage he was intercepted. Overall, that makes him one of the best at throwing the deep ball.