A hook hand might cause problems for Aaron Rodgers, but an eye patch would just add to his arsenal.
Rodgers was poked in the eye during Sunday's victory over the Saints. He was struck by safety Malcolm Jenkins, which drew a facemask penalty and temporarily affected the quarterback's vision. Fortunately for the Packers, Rodgers is going to be all right, although he doesn't think channeling his inner pirate would have been all that bad.
"You know, I have always enjoyed dressing up like a pirate. Wearing an eye patch, I think, would be awesome and would add some legitimacy to my toughness," Rodgers joked Tuesday during his weekly radio show on 540 ESPN and ESPNWisconsin.com. "It would have been sweet to go back in the game with an eye patch and lead us to victory. People aren't wearing eye patches as often anymore. What is up with that?"
Rodgers is right. What is up with that? Seemingly every pirate known to man rocks some combination of an eye patch, hook hand and peg leg while in pursuit of treasure chests and the sort, yet we hardly catch anyone walking the streets with that look. It's fortunate that people are avoiding injuries that would require such, but the level of toughness would certainly skyrocket with a few more eye patches being tossed on in the morning.
All joking aside, Rodgers avoided serious harm on the play, and he pointed out Tuesday that he actually had a worse incident occur during his junior year of high school in 2000. Sunday's eye poke wasn't without some effects, though.
"I couldn't see very well. Everything was just kind of bouncing around a little bit," Rodgers said. "If I had just closed my right, my left eye would have been looking really good, and if I would have just looked through my right eye, I probably would have been okay as well as I was doing on the sideline.
"When you have both open, the right eye obviously had some trauma to it, and I was just having a hard time trying to be able to get that depth perception as the eyes were trying to balance each other out," he continued. "I went down to one knee knowing that I would give Graham a little bit of time to warm up, knowing we were inside the five there with probably an automatic first down."
Rodgers' Packers eventually secured a 28-27 victory, but it's far less impressive without the eye patch. The aspiring pirate will say ahoy to Andrew Luck and the Colts in Week 5.
