It's still too early to write off Jordan Love's future with the Packers | Opinion
GREEN BAY, Wis. - At last month’s NFL draft, Brian Gutekunst for the first time suggested publicly that Jordan Love might never get a shot at being the Green Bay Packers’ quarterback.
Gutekunst, the team’s general manager, acknowledged the reality that Aaron Rodgers could be the Packers’ quarterback for three or more seasons after he recently signed a contract extension with the team.
“I think (Love’s) future is bright,” Gutekunst said after the last day of the draft. “As far as what his future is with us, we’ll kind of see how that goes. Obviously, with what we’ve done with Aaron and how long Aaron wants to play, that will factor in down the road. But we’re not making any of those decisions right now.”
That last sentence is important, because the Packers are not making those decisions now, and much can change in a year’s time in the NFL. Rodgers is exhibit No. 1 there.
But there now is a real chance Love will never get a season as the Packers’ quarterback after they traded up in the first round to draft him in 2020.
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Sure, there’s always the possibility Rodgers will retire after this season, maybe if he wins the Super Bowl. But it’s really, really hard to see him passing on the $59.5 million in cash he’s guaranteed in 2023 if he plays. That is a massive pay day.
There’s also the chance he’ll again become disgruntled with the team, or the Packers in the next year will decide Love has a good shot at being a winning quarterback in the NFL, and the team and Rodgers will agree to part ways with a trade.
Or maybe Rodgers will retire after two more seasons, though again he’d be walking away from huge pay ($49 million guaranteed) in ’24. And even that’s complicated by the decision the Packers will have to make next offseason – that is, whether to exercise Love’s fifth-year option for ’24 at the cost of a guaranteed salary of $23 million or more. They have to make that call next spring, a year before they'll know Rodgers' plans for '24. So if they exercise the option and Rodgers decides to play in ’24, one of the two most definitely will have to go.
So as of now, the odds aren't looking great that Love will ever get his shot at succeeding Rodgers. Love knows this as he guides the team as the No. 1 quarterback in Rodgers’ absence during OTA practices.
“I have no idea,” Love said of how he and advisers foresee this playing out. “As you see I’m under contract for two more years, maybe. I don’t know, I really don’t. I know for sure I’m here right now. Obviously this offseason I didn’t know what was going to happen either. Am I here, am I going to be somewhere else? It’s one of those things I try to spend as little time as I can thinking about it, because it’s not going to help me at all anyway.”
As for Love’s prospects of becoming a winning NFL quarterback down the road, it’s hard to see how you’d bet on him at this point. So few pan out, and nothing jumped out last season from his start against Kansas City and extended playing time in the finale at Detroit that said, “This guy’s got it," whatever it is.
But to be fair, I wouldn’t have bet a nickel on Rodgers at this point in his career, either. Nothing Rodgers had done in his first two seasons suggested he’d be any good, and he’s now a four-time NFL MVP. So you won’t get any grand pronouncements about Love here.
The most worth saying today is, he’s going to play a lot this preseason, and his performance will be far more important than the last two training camps. Rodgers’ third preseason is when he started showing glimpses he might pan out. After putting up 39.8 and 48.2 passer ratings in the ’05 and ’06 preseasons, he went for 106.0 in the summer of ’07. Then his play at Dallas after a Brett Favre injury late in the season convinced the Packers he was ready for his shot.
There’s no way to know whether Love will get that kind of chance in his third regular season. If Rodgers stays healthy, Love’s only snaps in real games might be in mop-up or victory formation. So this preseason will be big.
“For my own benefit playing as well as I can is going to help me in the long run, wherever that might take me,” Love said. “That’s my goal. Those are the reps I know I’m getting, in the preseason, so let’s go out there and make the most of those, play as well as I can and go from there.”
In Tuesday’s OTA practice that was open to the media, Love took a huge majority of the snaps with the starting offense. But most of the 11-on-11 drills were non-competitive and at less than full speed, so it was hard to glean whether he has improved much in the four months since the season ended.
Love’s best throw of the day during a full-speed period was a strike down the middle seam to first-year tight end Eli Wood. But a little earlier, he’d badly missed an open Christian Watson on similar route.
Love lives in Southern California in the offseason and said until he returned for the offseason program he worked two or three days a week with his personal quarterbacks coach, Steve Calhoun.
Calhoun isn’t as renowned as some other personal quarterbacks coaches such as Jordan Palmer, who is best known for helping Josh Allen with his accuracy issues; and Adam Dedeaux and John Beck, who at 3DQB have worked with, among others, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Matthew Stafford, Matt Ryan, Dak Prescott and Zach Wilson.
But Calhoun has his share of NFL clients, the most famous being Russell Wilson. Love was in middle school when he began working with Calhoun and feels most comfortable returning to those roots.
“I’ve been with him for so long,” Love said. “I really enjoy the workouts he puts me through, I feel like he gets me where I need to be. He’s also part receiver coach, so he has a lot of receivers out there. I enjoy him, he’s my guy.”
Love’s priority after returning home last January was throwing more on balance. Looking back at last season, Love said he wasn’t as attuned to his footwork as he needed to be, in part from observing Rodgers daily. Rodgers is as talented a thrower as the NFL has seen with his ability to deliver the ball even when he can’t set his feet.
“If you see it every day you’re going to start doing the things he’s doing,” Love said. “It was kind of getting back to the basics, what I do, and get away from that. There are times you have to do it, but my whole thing was, I don’t need to do it every time.”
Gutekunst was right not to trade Love before the draft, after he’d signed Rodgers to the extension. I have my doubts Love would have fetched that much on the trade market anyway – he just didn’t do enough when he played last year to think anyone would give up anything close to a first-round pick for him.
Better to hang onto Love for another season and take it from there. Who knows what might change in the next year?