Packers QB Jordan Love’s essay in the Players’ Tribune is going to make you cry (and laugh a little, too)
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love penned a personal essay chronicling his journey to the NFL, negotiating the challenges of his father's suicide and replacing a franchise icon in Aaron Rodgers.
Folks, it's going to get dusty wherever you are when you're reading it.
Love writes about the encouragement he's received from his family along the way, including his mother, Anna, who famously got a seat at the very top of Arrowhead Stadium for Love's first start in 2021.
"I got punched in the mouth that whole first half," he wrote of a game where he became the emergency starter after Rodgers was diagnosed with COVID-19. "It was humbling. But I’ll never forget, we ran out for the second half, I knew there was one thing I could count on for sure. I knew that way up there at the top of the stadium, in the very last row – literally the last row – one person was cheering me on. Even if the whole stadium was against me, I still had somebody up there who had my back.
"My mom. Always.
"Rocking her shades. Hands between her legs. Not saying a word. Just praying I don’t get hurt.
"Same as it’s always been, since I was 14 years old."
It was at 14 that Love's father, Orbin, died by suicide. Love wrote about the pain of that moment and the aftermath, trying to find a semblance of normalcy in grief.
Here were some of the best passages from the piece:
Jordan Love captured humorous moments, as well
"My dad actually wanted to name me Michael Jordan," he wrote. "That’s real. Michael Jordan Love. My mom vetoed it, thank God."
"Him and my mom were both police officers. My dad was a sergeant for the Bakersfield Police Department and my mom was California Highway Patrol, but they couldn’t have been more different personalities. The smile never left my dad’s face. My mom, she was the yin to his yang. She was all business. She had an aura, you know? And that aura said, 'Did you do your homework?'
'Don’t you boys have a pop quiz tomorrow?'
'Yo, how’s she even know about that???'
On Jordan Love's father's mental-health struggles
Love wrote about the deep bond he had with his father, and how his father pushed him to try every sport from a young age.
"There’s a picture of me from when I was a baby and my dad is putting me up on a race horse," he wrote. "I’m like one, in my diaper, and I’m chilling up on some Secretariat-looking dude."
You're going to love the picture when you see it.
But there was also a heartbreaking twist.
"He hadn’t been his normal self for a while. He was hiding all that stuff from us kids, but the medication that he was taking for his blood pressure had really changed him. They couldn’t figure out what was going on, and he was really suffering. My mom called it a 'medical demon,' and that’s the only way you could ever explain it. My dad was such a happy, positive, giving dude … The light in every room.
"Then the light went out."
Jordan Love wrote about almost quitting football
"When football started that fall, I wanted to quit," Love wrote. "It wasn’t even that big of a deal. I was a nobody. I was the smallest kid on the field — literally. My freshman year, I was 5'6", 136 pounds. Maybe 5'7" with my Vans on. I didn’t even make JV. I was the backup QB on the freshman team. Just some dude.
"Going into that sophomore year, my mom was driving me to practice, and when we got there, I didn’t want to get out of the car. I told her, 'I don’t want to do this anymore. Maybe I’ll quit and focus on basketball.'
"And it’s funny because it’s never like the movies, you know? My mom was not doing movie dialogue. It was just mom dialogue.
“'That doesn’t make any logical sense to me, Jordan.'
“'Why? I’m the backup. Who cares?'
“'No, this doesn’t make sense. You love football.'
"'Mom, I don’t play.'
"She saw right through me. She saw how much I was hurting. I just wasn’t in my right mind. So she made a deal with me.
"She said, 'Just give it one more year. If you don’t love it at the end of this year, and you want to stop, then we’ll stop.'"
Anna's devotion included making trips all over the country when Love was at Utah State, even when he was just a backup, despite him indicating such journeys were unnecessary.
One teammate saw her waving and said, “Bro, we’re in Ida-ho."
"She was always there," Love wrote. "Just like my dad. She never thought in a million years that her son would be an NFL quarterback. She just wanted to know that I was OK."
On his surprise selection in the NFL draft and working with Aaron Rodgers
Love admitted he was as surprised as anybody when the Packers called his number on draft night in 2020.
"But before me and Aaron could even talk, the narrative was rolling. And it’s so crazy to me, because from the jump, Aaron was great with me. He laid out how he was in my same situation, and that he wanted to make sure there was no hostility. I told him I just wanted to learn and soak it all in.
"I mean, I’d been a QB2 for a lot of my life. For me, it was nothing new. It was perfect, actually. Think about it: you’re coming into this league at 21 years old. It’s a different world. I’m not even talking about just football. You have to be able to command a room and know how to talk to different guys, how to motivate them — what to say, what not to say. I got to watch Aaron and how he handled those situations, and that was invaluable.
"Then you’d watch him on Sundays, and he’s dictating the terms to the defense. He’s putting them on the back foot, not the other way around. In college, you’re just playing. In the NFL, you have to be manipulating. I learned that from Aaron. He’d always be looking over to the opponents’ sideline after every single play, and I didn’t understand what he was doing. It’s chaos out there — you’re trying to get the play from your own sideline, the crowd is yelling, you got different packages coming in and out.
"The elite guys, it’s like they’re playing two games of chess at the same time."