I’m not ready to give up on Aaron Rodgers.

The Green Bay Packers quarterback has had a down year, to be sure. The Packers are sitting at 4-4 after losing on Sunday to the Colts, mired in third place in a division they looked primed to win once the Vikings fell back to earth. Rodgers has looked positively mortal in those eight games, and the stats bear out what I’ve been seeing on the field — Rodgers seems less mobile, and he’s taking fewer shots downfield. At 32 years old, Rodgers is already being questioned by some as being past his prime and on the downturn.

I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it because Rodgers still has all the tools, and this Packers team isn’t working right now. Rodgers can’t throw to guys who are covered, and he can’t surprise defenses when his team runs the most predictable offense in the NFL.

For me, watching Packers games is akin to seeing Helio Castroneves show up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and being asked to drive a Ford Fiesta. The Fiesta is a fine car, good and reliable, but uh, it’s Helio Castroneves at Indy. Maybe we give him something with a little more horsepower and see what he can do?

The Packers’ offense is a symphony of bland. It laughs in the face of creativity. They’ve got one of the most accomplished offensive lines in the league, a bruising running back in Eddie Lacy, and one of the most gifted quarterbacks of the past 25 years, and this offseason head coach Mike McCarthy talked about getting back to basics with his offense. Seriously. This was the quote, via ProFootballTalk.

“The best plays are still the basic plays. It’s not the design of the play. It’s what everybody can do with that design,” McCarthy said. “That’s what we have to get back to — winning with the fundamentals, with players and not plays. When you get in tough times, offensively, we may have leaned a little more towards plays instead of focusing on developing players. That’s a big part of my getting back in there full-time [calling plays]. That’s how I built this thing, and that’s how it should be ran. We got away from that a little bit.”

At the surface, this seems like a reasonable sentiment. Keep it simple. Go with what works. Then you realize: Wait. What? The league has changed. This isn’t the 1986 Bears he’s coaching. The team’s strength is in the offense. McCarthy has got a veteran offensive line, capable receivers and Rodgers. The run up the middle on first, short pass on second, run up the middle on third isn’t going to get it done anymore.

Elsewhere in the NFL, things are getting more complex. The Patriots’ offense changes weekly, implementing new ideas and new plays to best take apart the opponents’ defenses. The Saints have all sorts of wild looks for Drew Brees to dial up. Other teams would kill for the ability to run more complex offenses, if they only had a quarterback like Rodgers.

No, at the Packers, they want to dumb things down. They don’t want to give their offense too much to think about. While every other team in the NFL runs crossing routes and pick routes to give their receivers a chance to get open, the Packers run ISO routes and hope their guys will beat their defenders.

They just don't win enough with the ISO routes. Five times receivers crossed each other in the Giants game for GB. That's absurd. pic.twitter.com/Q1w2KVI5e9 — Pete Prisco (@PriscoCBS) October 11, 2016

Rodgers hasn’t been perfect this season. His yards per attempt are at the lowest since he became the starter, and he’s not looking downfield like he used to.

But a good coaching staff can find a way to win with that. They can add underneath crossing routes and wheel routes and pick plays and all the other things good coaches do to get good quarterbacks going. Instead the Packers are running their simple offense, hoping receivers get open and Rodgers delivers a perfect pass. That’s asking too much right now.