Jordan Love could give Aaron Rodgers all the leverage he needs against the Packers
Rodgers looks like he'll play sometime this year. When might all depend on how Love plays in his first real training camp.
Aaron Rodgers is not worried about being usurped like Brett Favre was.
The reigning MVP sat for three seasons in the NFL before taking over for the Hall of Famer, creating a rift that briefly divided Packer fans before winning healed everything. Favre went on to instill false hope in Minnesota and New York before defrauding the state of Mississippi out of more than half a million dollars. He’s currently hawking copper products in between snippets of daytime TV and being extremely not a doctor online (do not click this link, it will make you want to punch things).
Rodgers has his own budding star waiting in the wings. In fact, it’s the very player whose unexpected selection -- at least, to Rodgers -- has caused the rift that could lead to his departure from Green Bay. Jordan Love was a special enough prospect for general manager Brian Gutekunst to eschew the 2020 Draft’s loaded class of wide receivers and trade up from No. 30 to No. 26 and select.
But while it’s easy to draw parallels between two west coast quarterbacks whose draft stock slid far enough to refresh a staid Packers roster, Rodgers doesn’t have to worry about Love escorting him to the exit. Instead, it’s Love’s limited development that could force Green Bay’s hand and make a choice between one of the greatest players in franchise history and the front office that’s antagonized him to the point of simmering indignation.
If Rodgers holds out, an overwhelmed Love would only boost his stock higher
Training camp begins soon. The preseason officially starts in 10 days. We don’t know when or even if Rodgers will show up to work out with the Packers, but rumblings suggest he’ll be there eventually.
The veteran doesn’t have many cards to play in his battle against the front office that signed him to a four-year, $134 million contract extension 20 months before drafting his replacement. He’s got to show up in order to get paid (and protect his legacy), and it’s unlikely any team could offer fair value in a trade for the league’s most valuable player even if the Packers decided to ship him off.
What he can do, however, is keep to himself for a while. Sit out the start of preseason camp while working out at home in California or wherever. Accumulate some fines while remaining tight lipped, officially, with the press.
This would create a vacuum through which Love would get sucked into the spotlight. It would likely work in Rodgers’ favor.
Love jumped to the NFL after his redshirt junior season at Utah State, but it was still a year too early to capitalize on his best play. He suffered a significant dropoff in year four with the Aggies, fading from All-Mountain West honoree to the conference’s fifth- or sixth-best passer, depending on which metric you use.
His jump from “pretty good Group of 5 QB” to “NFL franchise cornerstone” was further muddied by a Covid-marred 2020 season that destroyed the typical preseason process that could have eased his adjustment to the pros. He didn’t play a single snap as a rookie as the immortal Tim Boyle handled kneel-downs as the team’s official QB2. Green Bay signed Kurt Benkert, Jake Dolegata, and Blake by-god Bortles to push him for second-team snaps this summer. If Love has gone out of his way to impress coaches and teammates with his play since then, we haven’t heard about it.
"(We're) just trying to get a feel for how much he can really handle,” head coach Matt LaFleur told reporters at the end of the team’s offseason program. “I think he's done a great job of being intentional about his work, how he goes out to practice every day and I think it's paying off for him. I think he's made some progress."
“I think he’s made some progress” is some of the faintest praise you’ll hear heaped on a first round quarterback. And yet, if Rodgers decides to skip the preseason, he could wind up starting preseason games in Green Bay.
If Love falls apart, even in exhibition play, that swings momentum in Rodgers’ favor. Maybe not enough to get Gutekunst fired, but enough to create the urgency that makes real concessions possible. If fans in Neenah and Fond du Lac are suddenly faced with the reality of filling their Sundays with PG-13 swear words and angrily-drank Bloody Marys instead of happy ones, it’ll create newfound pressure on the Pack.
So what could the Packers expect if Love has to start earlier than anticipated?
To get a better idea of what Love brings to the table -- and why it was a bit unusual for the Packers to trade up and select him in 2020 -- let’s look at an average performance from his final college season. His seventh-best game of a 13-game schedule, per passer rating, was a 7-31 October loss to an eventual 11-win Air Force team. The Falcons limited the former All-Mountain West QB to season-low 114 passing yards on 23 attempts. Though he threw zero interceptions, he also only found the end zone once.
Love was stymied by a lack of opportunity as Air Force went full service academy on the Aggies, rolling up 448 rushing yards to 24 passing and limiting Utah State to 14 minutes of offense for the ENTIRE DAMN NIGHT. This was a massive contrast to 2018, when the dynamic quarterback was able to torch the Falcons for 356 yards and a pair of touchdowns in a 42-32 rout.
So what changed? It’s fair to say Love got little support from his run game, but State barely tried to establish the run after falling behind AF’s meat grinder offense by two scores in the second quarter; top tailback Gerold Bright had as many carries as Air Force had total passes that evening … six. Love would have had the opportunity to will his team back into this game with a string of big plays. Instead, he was rattled in the pocket by the Falcons’ undersized four-man pass rush throughout the night.
Here he is on his second third down of the game, attempting to turn an AF fumble into some visiting-team momentum:
He has a wide receiver over in the soft middle of the Air Force zone and makes the correct read to get him the ball. However, his inability to step up in the pocket or even stand where he is and deliver a stable back-foot throw upsets the timing of the play. Love’s lateness allows the defensive backs to converge and limit his window of success. A high ball shuts it completely, and the Aggies are forced to punt.
One drive later, Love faced a reasonable third down just for his blocking to once again degrade as he turns a play-action rollout right into a wave of pressure:
Again, Love has the right idea. He doesn’t force a bad throw. If Air Force’s defensive tackle doesn’t split the MWC’s laziest double team he’d have a shot to hit #13 Devin Thompkins with a mildly cross-body throw for the first. Instead, it’s a sack and the Aggies would pave the way for a 57-yard AF touchdown drive that followed.
The next drive sees Love’s longest pass of the day, a 31-yarder for tailback Jaylen Warren. That’s good! It was a screen, however, which is less exciting. It leads to a third-and-10 where Love, as is tonight’s tradition, gets stuck behind pressure from a four-man front, makes the correct read -- this time an open wideout for what should be a 44-yard touchdown -- and cannot execute with a Falcon in his face:
This pattern repeated itself throughout the second half as well, though there were positive notes. Love faced pressure from a four-man rush all night but still found some open spots in a dense seven-player secondary to showcase the talent that made him a first round prospect. Here’s an especially nice needle-threading to keep his team’s only scoring drive alive early in the third:
And here’s his lone touchdown pass from that Saturday:
It’s a touch underthrown, but it’s still a beauty. That’s why Gutekunst moved assets to bring Love into the fold. The tools are there, but in 2019 they failed to congeal as opponents realized mild pressure against a bad offensive line could breed chaos.
Utah State converted just one of nine third down attempts in the loss. Love was 3-8 with 30 passing yards in those situations. 27 of those yards came on the touchdown above. This wasn’t unusual against good and/or respectable teams in an underwhelming 2019. State converted just six of 17 third or fourth downs in a loss to Wake Forest and one of 12 against eventual national champion LSU (Love had three interceptions). The team was better against Boise State in converting 13 of 21 chances, but that was in a 56-21 loss so ...yeah.
The Air Force game is just one example, but it shows us the flaw that’s endemic to his game; the one that dropped him from potential top 10 pick after an eye-catching 2018 to a borderline Day 1 selection in spring 2020. Love’s problems aren’t ones of mechanics or build — they boil down to execution. He’s not making early Josh Allen mistakes and chucking deep balls into triple coverage or eyes-closed laterals to no one in particular. Instead, he’s taking all the right roads only for his car to break down before he can get to his destination.
The Packers saw that and saw an offensive-minded head coach in LaFleur and said “we can fix that engine.” But while no one is waving the white flag on Love’s NFL career yet, the silence we’ve heard from training camps and practices has been deafening in terms of how the team’s tinkering has played out. Love hasn’t gotten more than vague platitudes from those who’ve seen what he can do against NFL defenses. The odds he impresses in the preseason, let alone real games in 2021, appear pretty low.
That’s good news for Rodgers, who can show Green Bay just how valuable he is with his absence. If Love can’t realize his potential, and fast, the Packers risk squandering another year of contention. We haven’t seen anything that suggests he can get there yet. If Rodgers decides not to report to the start of training camp on Wednesday, it suggests Rodgers hasn’t seen that either.