DeShone Kizer sees beyond Packers backup role

Although his first two decades in the NFL may suggest a profession already down for the count, Green Bay Packers quarterback DeShone Kizer would like to make it crystal clear that nobody should count him out.
The 23-year-old QB is preparing to begin his second season with the Packers after being traded from the Cleveland Browns last March. Staying in this league is a chance no player can ever take for granted and, as he enters Year 3, Kizer lately expressed that he’s feeling the heat more than ever before.
“Today, it is about making sure every time I step out on that field that I am giving 100-percent work. There’s no complacency,” Kizer informed Jim Owczarski of USA Today’s Packers News. “There is not any’next year’ anymore. You grow up within sports really focusing in on understanding and development there’s a deadline that’s set up, so you don’t necessarily put as much stress on yourself to get things done immediately.
“Well, that timeline is beginning to shrink for me in the sense that the lifespan of a typical NFL athlete is three decades. This is year three to me. I’ve gone , I have set stuff on tape and today it is all about making certain that from here on out everything I set tape really reflects who I know I can be.”
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To this point, Kizer’s film will reveal flashes of potential mixed with all the woes displayed by many young QBs ahead of him. In his lone season with the Browns, Kizer was the guy on a team that became just the next team in NFL history to go 0-16.
Kizer started 15 games that year — that the one DNP came via a benching in Week 6 — and listed 11 touchdowns, 2,894 passing yards and a league-high 22 interceptions. In three game appearances with Green Bay, he went 20 of 42 for 187 yards and two selections.
Fast forward to 2019, Kizer is prepared to change his public perception. Since Aaron Rodgers’ understudy, Kizer’s aims may seem lofty however, the Notre Dame product has said he’s willing to spend the job.
“Personnel, particularly within this organization, is strictly upstairs. And I don’t get the job done upstairs. My office is downstairs. My mindset is all about me. I have all the confidence in the world that when I am playing my best ball there’s no one that will stop me,” he shared. “For me to compare myself to another backup quarterback who is in or a tryout guy who comes in would be dumb of me in the feeling that I’d be restricting myself since I really don’t find myself as a career backup in this league.
“I don’t find myself as Aaron Rodgers’ backup for the last era of his career. I see myself as a Super Bowl MVP. That is the goal that I want to head toward. That’s the level I want to play . Consequently, if I’m competing and focused on the backup competition, then once more, I’m restricting myself.”
Obtaining from underneath Rodgers’ highly touted shadow won’t be easy but Kizer is going to have a chance to continue learning from one of the game’s greatest in hopes of one day becoming another beginning location.
His career thus far has lacked consistency — he’ll be playing under his fourth head coach in three seasons this season — but he is not letting him. Kizer considers his confidence and focus will gradually distinguish him.
“I genuinely think that I am on an upward trajectory. I’m enjoying the best soccer I’ve ever playedwith. I am not turning the ball over as much anymore. I’m seeing the game,” he said. “I am learning so much from Aaron. I’m learning so much from the systems that I’ve been in that I truly think that at any point in time as we talk, if I could continue to remain on the road which I’m on at the moment, that I can get back to the path which I believed that I had been on as a rookie starting in this league.”

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