Sometimes
in life, you may be doing your absolute best, although you may not reach your
ultimate goals right away. That is ok, because if you keep pushing and
scratching in pursuit of something that means the world to you; you will
eventually reach that goal and soon realize that it was all worth it. Staying cool, calm, & persistent while
working at your craft will lead you into a world of opportunities even if you
can’t quite see it on the surface. This
is exactly how things have panned out for the Green Bay Packers and QB Jordan
Love. Love, much like his predecessor
Aaron Rodgers who had to sit behind legendary gun-slinger Brett Favre, also had
to sit behind Rodgers. Jordan was the 26th
pick in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft.
The pick for a QB once Utah State University starter (Jordan Love) was
quite the surprise twist that Aaron Rodgers was not yet ready for. At the time (2023) Brett Favre had spoken to
Rodgers and reminded him of the same thing happening to him about 15 years
prior when he had taken the starting job away from Farve. Rodgers pushed back as long as he could,
winning back-to-back MVPs (2020-2021) both the year that Love was drafted and
the following year as well.
In comes new, young talented players every single season. They always seem to be faster, stronger, and
smarter; it is evolution, and for the veterans they all eventually get
replaced at some point by either getting traded, benched, or even cut/waived by
teams in their careers. It is very
seldom, if ever, that an NFL player or really any athlete gets the opportunity
to play out their entire career for one team. All players know it is the nature of the
business and never personal. Although
there have been a few stories over the years of certain coaches or staff members
that may have been cruel to some players and treated them unfairly to get rid
of them, sometimes there are going to be some bad apples in the bunch, but that
is a true rarity and seldom happens.
People have often joked about the NFL being an acronym for Not for Long,
seeing as how the physicality shows us many, many times throughout every year
in the National Football League that while we sit there and watch to be
entertained over hundreds of injuries take place. It is inevitable even with the league trying
to figure out all kinds of ways to keep people from getting hurt, there will
never be a possible way to do so while hitting people in such a fast-paced
game.
Keeping
the same sentiments as I previously alluded to, in with the new and out with
the old, the next cycle will always be better, right? That is just evolution, and I must say the
last few cycles of QBs have been getting better and better. Some QBs can come right in, take the pole
position, and seem to fair well, as others may wind up ruining their confidence,
decision-making, and quite possibly their careers. It has happened numerous times in the past
when coaches try to force rookie QBs into games and hope for them to break out overnight or maybe because they just don’t have a reliable enough candidate or
veteran kind of presence on the bench to go to.
Then different types of young talented QBs may get
drafted to a team that purposely drafts them knowing that they will either be a
work in process or draft them hoping that they may be able to keep the team up
to par from when a veteran is traded, waived, or retires. In Jordan’s instance, Green Bay and GM Brian
Gutekunst saw raw talent that they figured would be a perfect fit. They saw a guy they could stash, groom, and
build around for the future while also realizing that Aaron was still at the
top of his game as it obviously showed with two consecutive MVPs.
Jordan
Love was electric last season in his first full season as a starter and fans in
Green Bay were somewhat torn. Do you
blame them, I mean how could you not feel this way as a diehard cheesehead. After all, Aaron was now a 4x NFL MVP and
brought the Packers another Lombardy amongst other accomplishments within his
tenure there. Love at times didn’t look
great, but he did kick his inaugural season off with a doozy. Throwing for 316 yards, only 5 incompletions
(27 of 32, 84.4 CMP%) passing for 2 TDs and 0 turnovers, Love looked primed to
be a starter. In fact, the Packers new
QB started off this new era of GB football with a 3-0 start while throwing a 9-0
TD-INT in his first four games. Down the
stretch Love started to falter a little, starting with the week 12 opponent the
Vikings, Packers went on a 4-game losing streak to Min, Den, LV, &
Det. During that four-game slide Love’s
production was porous, tossing only 4 TDs while compiling INTs (7) left and
right among being outscored 94-60 by their opponents. Love can’t account for all the blame here as
he had both top WRs and TE miss time last season due to injuries, along with RB
Aaron Jones missing 6 games of his own dealing with ACL & MCL issues.
Remember
just a few seasons ago when we heard Rodgers talking about Packers GM Brian
Gutekunst, projecting his feelings towards the player personnel that Brian was
bringing into town. Whether it was draft
picks, free agency etc., he was saying that Gutekunst wasn’t bringing in enough
talent or any at all to the skill positions to help Rodgers out. On the contrary, let's fast forward to 2 years
ago when Gutekunst selected two WRs (2022 Draft) Christian Watson and Romeo
Doubs who are now the top two options on this Packers offense and if not for
injuries could be viewed as quite possibly a top 10-12 duo in the league at the
WR position. Then there was the 2023 NFL
Draft where Green Bay’s GM seemingly hit again on two more WRs, Dontayvion
Wicks and Jayden Reed. Last year’s
rookie Jayden Reed had an awesome season with 10 total TDs, racking up over 800
total scrimmage yards and hauling in 64 recs.
Reed paced the Packers in almost every receiving category as he led them
in total recs, rec yds, rec yds/g, and rec TDs (8 tied with Doubs).
With
all this talent from the skilled positions that Green Bay has put into place
this is going to be one of the most intriguing and exciting teams in all of
football. The Packers did make one
slight move to their offense however, by allowing RB Aaron Jones to walk away
to division rival Minnesota Vikings, they went out and came away with what can
be viewed as an immediate upgrade to the RB position by signing ex-Raider’s
rusher Josh Jacobs. Jacobs is younger
than Jones and although he’s coming over following a down year where he only
rushed for less than half of the yardage he had in 2022 when won the rushing
title with 1,653 yards. He is also
coming off a season where he wasn’t 100% healthy and missed four games.
When you surround QB Jordan Love
with all the weaponry he currently has at his disposal how can you go
wrong? Jordan ended last season with
superb numbers throwing for 4,159 yds, 32 tds, 11 ints, and a passer rating of
96.1. Love also ran for another 4 tds. Come playoff time he leveled up with another
466 yds, 5 tds, 2 ints in two post-season matchups that came against top
talented defensive units in the Dallas Cowboys and the San Fransico
forty-niners. Love showed top-tier talent in just his first season and because of that ended up with a lucrative
new 4-year deal paying him $220M ($55M APY) with an NFL record-setting $75M signing
bonus.
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