I think the wording of the statements is what's wrong. I don't think it should have been that Rodgers asked them to run the wrong routes, I think it should have read that he told them to run different routes. There's a huge difference there. One is showing intent to destroy the play, the other could have been based on his knowledge of what the defense was doing to cut off the normal routes.
Since we don't know if the plays he changed the routes were those that failed or succeeded, I'm going to say that they probably worked more than half the time, or we would have seen McCarthy reacting to them.
This is a delicate area. When I coached, I asked all our coaches to do everything they could to teach the QBs and all skill players on offense that there are times when you need to make subtle adjustments, and changes from what was called from the sideline, because they see what's immediately in front of them prior to the snap, and often due to personnel changes on defense that happen after the play was sent in, and it's too late to adjust from the sideline.
The only period of time that I saw real creativity with the offense was during the first go-round with Joe Philbin handling the nuts and bolts of how plays would unfold. He seemed to work with our QBs in a way that stuck to the McCarthy antiquated packages, yet created options, and wrinkles that our guys under center could use on the field to make a play succeed. When he left, so did that creativity.
