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Aaron Rodgers, Greg Jennings
 

In his first full season as a Fox Sports commentator, Greg Jenning has spent most of his time as a studio analyst. For one matchup -- Bucs at Packers in Week 13 -- Jennings was in the broadcast booth as the color commentator for Tim Brando.

Jennings played seven seasons for Green Bay, and one of his first pregame interviews was with his former head coach, Mike McCarthy.

"Our production meeting was on Saturday," Jennings remembers. "Obviously, I have a relationship with Mike, so the back and forth dialogue was probably a lot different than most, but it was great because I know the culture there, I know who he is, I know what he was trying to do. It was great to get his feedback on Aaron [Rodgers] being out, and having Brett Hundley at quarterback, and that kind of pulling him back to reality of what it is like to not have that elite quarterback, having Brett [Favre] when he first came to Green Bay, and then transitioning right into Aaron Rodgers, so you have two first-ballot Hall of Famers that you've had the luxury of having. He talked about that a little bit and said, 'This challenges him as a coach.'"

Rodgers did make it back in Week 15, but the Packers failed to make the postseason. In Jennings' Packers career,  Favre and Rodgers started every game at quarterback -- except two by Matt Flynn,. When Jennings signed with the Vikings in 2013, his QB situation was just a tad different. Christian Ponder, Matt Cassell and Josh Freeman all got starts that season in Minnesota.

"It was huge making that adjustment because you're game never really changes, but who you play with impacts you greatly," Jennings says. "I think that every great quarterback and every great receiver, they feed off one another. If you're a great receiver without the great quarterback that brings you down a notch, almost to where you begin to question yourself. The same could be said about a great quarterback, where if you have a great quarterback and you don’t have the great pieces around him, it’s like, 'Man, am I really that great?' Going from Brett and Aaron to Christian Ponder and Matt Cassel and all of these other guys, it was a huge drop-off. I can't even put into words, and again, no disrespect to them, it's just about how great these other two guys were."

Such a comment is timely, as the NFL's final four includes one future Hall of Fame quarterback in Tom Brady and three unprovens in Blake Bortles, Case Keenum and Nick Foles. Neither Keenum nor Foles started in Week 1.

It's not Jennings' job to try to mesh with quarterbacks anymore. It's his role to analyze them. In years to come, that may be back in the broadcast booth. Jennings certainly gained respect for those who do such a job week-in, week-out.

"As a player and even as a fan, you tend to think, 'These guys don’t know what they're talking about. They're just talking. They're just having conversation. They don't understand, they're coming from a non-experienced place,'" Jennings says. "But they do so much homework that they can be credible. They are credible. Some dudes say some outlandish things and they don't quite know the ins and outs of a locker room, but because they study these guys so much and they sit down with the teams, and that's the most important element of color commentating. When you have these production meetings, being able to pull out a head coach or a coordinator or a player, something that you could use when you're calling the game that makes the fan and the viewer who are listening, really believe that.

"It just opened my eyes to how much they really do know, versus from a player's perspective, just thinking, 'Man, they don’t know what they are talking about.'"

Jennings spoke to ThePostGame on behalf of PepsiCo's "Game Day Grub Match: Athlete Face-Off" campaign. In the series, Jennings battled Rashad Jennings and Nick Mangold in a three-part cooking challenge with Anne Burrell and Josh Capon among the judges.

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