NFL open thread: elaborate hand signals edition
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Kalyn Kaher has an entertaining story which shows being a young receiver playing with Aaron Rodgers is exactly as pleasant as you’d expect:
Saturdays are typically the easiest day of the NFL week. Players come in, watch film from practice and then go through a light walk-through. There’s no real physical exertion required. But for Packers rookie offensive skill players, Saturdays are the most mentally exhausting day of the week.
“The signal meetings was by far the worst thing,” said former Packers receiver Chris Blair, who spent the 2021 season as a rookie on Green Bay’s practice squad. “I used to hate those.”
Rodgers uses hand signals at the line of scrimmage to change a route or a concept. You’re probably familiar with a few of his most common ones: the helmet tap, the one where he holds his left arm behind his back with his thumb pointed down, another where he raises an index finger and quickly rotates it and another that looks like the Hawaiian hang loose sign.
On Saturdays, rookie receivers, running backs and tight ends get quizzed on them. “You don’t want to get called on because … you gotta do it in front of the whole team,” said former Packers receiver Equanimeous St. Brown, who now plays for the Bears.
“It’s probably the most nerve-racking for a young player because we don’t get taught them,” said former Green Bay running back Kylin Hill, who was drafted in 2021 and released in November. “You have to learn them on the fly.”
“That’s definitely something wide receivers don’t look forward to, is the signal meeting, because we have so many,” said backup quarterback Jordan Love. “You don’t want any of that stuff getting out, so we wait until the season starts to start going through signals.”
None of the current or former Packers players interviewed for this story could place an exact number on how many signals Rodgers expects his offense to know, but several estimated a number somewhere in the 30s.
“What’s so crazy is all the coaches don’t even know all of them,” Blair said. “It’s really a thing that you really have to learn from watching (Rodgers) in practice or asking one of the vets.” Blair said that when watching film in Green Bay, coaches would sometimes think a receiver ran the wrong route. “But we would be able to show them like, no, Aaron showed us the signal!”
When he’s playing on a historic level you have to live with it, but if he continues to slip this is going to get old really quickly.