It was a long, winding road to get here, but Jordan Love is finally ready to be the Packers’ starting quarterback after being selected in the first round off the 2020 NFL Draft.
With Aaron Rodgers safely in New York after his much-awaited trade to the Jets, Love is set to take over as the full-time starter in Green Bay – and he admitted that his road to the starting job felt like a long one.
“It seemed like three years, it seemed like a while looking back on it,” Love told reporters on Wednesday. “The first year was the longest. …Definitely felt like a while.”
The Packers infamously traded up in the first round in 2020 to draft Love, a polarizing quarterback prospect out of Utah State, with Rodgers still on the roster and the team coming off an appearance in the NFC Championship game.
The move was considered questionable at the time, and Rodgers then went on to have back-to-back MVP seasons with the Packers, leading many to question whether Love would ever play for the Packers.
Green Bay then rewarded Rodgers’ excellent seasons with a three-year, $150 million contract extension in 2022 – which Love admitted was the difficult.
“But I’ll admit, I think the hardest time was when he re-signed the contract last year,” Love said. “It was kind of like, ‘OK, well, where do we go from here? What do I do?’ I sat back, thought to myself and came back with the approach like just go ball out.”
But the Packers took a step backwards in 2022, missing the playoffs, and with Rodgers approaching 40, the team decided to ship him to the Jets, clearing the way for Love to take over in his fourth season – the same point in Rodgers’ career that he took over for Brett Favre.
Love has made one start in his career – in 2021, when Rodgers tested positive for COVID and was forced to miss a game against the Chiefs.
It did not go well; he completed 19 of 34 passes for 190 yards, a touchdown and an interception in a 13-7 loss, with a brutal 29.2 passing grade on PFF.
However, he showed some flashes in relief for Rodgers during a game against the Eagles in 2022, throwing a touchdown pass to Christian Watson.
Love believes he has become a better player in the past three years while backing up Rodgers.
“Since college and since I’ve been here, I’ve improved drastically,” he said. “Just learning the scheme, learning how to play the scheme and just improving myself as a quarterback.”
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