Can the Matt Lafleur & Aaron Rodgers relationship actually work?

As part of my week-long 2019 NFL preview, I’ll be reviewing 10 of the teams that intrigue the most this upcoming season. As you might’ve guessed from the image above, we’ll start things off with the Green Bay Packers.

There are many who believe that the pairing of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and new head coach Matt LaFleur is a thought experiment that could best — if not only — be described by Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton Jr.:

Cal: “We go together like Chinese food and chocolate pudding.”
Ricky: “Yeah, but Cal, those are two things that don’t really go together, though.”
Cal: “We go together like cocaine and waffles.”
Ricky: “No, like, for instance, if I say peanut butter and… ?”
Cal: “… ladies.”
Ricky: “No, jelly.”
Cal: “You like to put jelly on a lady?!?”

The embattled — and now deposed — Mike McCarthy was Green Bay’s head coach for 13 of the 14 years that Rodgers has been in the NFL. Together, they had eight playoff appearances, six division championships, and a Super Bowl win.

But under McCarthy’s offensive guidance — or total lack thereof — Rodgers effectively developed into the NFL’s Thelonious Monk: a virtuoso improvisationalist whose genre-bending mastery most often arises amidst the organized chaos around him.