IN A SHOCKER, GREEN BAY HAS QB DRAMA WITH LOVE AFTER RODGERS AND FAVRE
Jordan Love was supposed to play football, with extreme arm talent, until it was time to make him the highest-paid soul in NFL history — meaning the Packers have another quarterback with deep needs
You’ll never guess what’s happening in Green Bay, as in Titletown, as in a luxury hotel near where I parked on a resident’s front lawn with Illinois plates. The Packers are struck by new quarterbacking drama. This comes more than 30 years after Brett Favre arrived and months since Aaron Rodgers departed in early 2023.
What’s inside the Cheesehead, anyway? More bad karma?
In the case of Jordan Love, I don’t immediately jump to the sky and blame the front office. He has enjoyed one terrific half-season, period. The way salaries function in the NFL, a player entering his fifth year can ask for the moon, and while he was great in the playoffs after throwing for 32 touchdowns and 4,159 yards in the regular season, should Love become the highest-paid soul in league history?
Everyone waited after he was drafted in 2020 while Rodgers, who was compiling two more MVP seasons, wasn’t thrilled he was there. Finally, the world embraced Free Love, including his January masterpiece against the Dallas Cowboys. Should he make $56 million per year based on short-term service? The sides will reach an agreement, because the Packers must keep moving in an NFC North with the contending Lions and trending Bears. But I must say I dare to see more from him. And as Love claims he won’t practice or play in games until a contract is done, it creates excitement in Detroit, where Jared Goff signed a $212 million deal, and in Chicago, where Caleb Williams brings skill that could disable a generation of dark-green-and-gold rule in the so-called “rivalry.”
“We completely understand where he’s coming from,” said general manager Brian Gutekunst, who just finished years of internal dueling with Rodgers.
For now, welcome Sean Clifford as a starter as he splits reps with rookie Michael Pratt. The Packers seem to believe they produce Hall of Famers as easily as smoked sausage, but if Love keeps saying no, he would make $11 million in the final year of a mini-extension. Joe Burrow, who almost won a Super Bowl before an injury plague, has the highest average pay at $55 million. Trevor Lawrence, who hasn’t done as much, is right there with him. Jordan Love? Asked when a third quarterback will be acquired, coach Matt LaFleur responded Monday.
“That's a great question,” he said. “Obviously, we're hopeful we'll get something done here in the next ... sooner than later. But that's something that we're going to have to just adjust on the fly.”
Wasn’t Love simply a project with extreme arm talent? Wasn’t he a polar opposite after Rodgers admonished management, which came after Favre couldn’t decide when and where he wanted to play? Turns out Love wants a salary like Jordan (Michael). Where’s Don Majkowski?
How fascinating that Rodgers remains established, after tearing his Achilles tendon on the fourth snap of 2023, as the grizzled hope of the New York Jets. He should have appeared at mandatory OTA practices last month, but he preferred a visit to Egypt, where he was inhaling who-knows-what. The team should have been mad, with coach Robert Saleh calling it an “unexcused” absence after Rodgers ripped the organization for disclosing secrets to the media. But he’s Aaron Rodgers, after all, and teammates backed him. Saleh will lose his job in a playoff-less season.
Rodgers will keep being Rodgers. “They can arbitrarily put a tag on whatever week of OTAs they want and say, ‘This is the minicamp week,’ which makes it somehow more mandatory than the other weeks,” Rodgers told a Barstool podcast. “But it was an OTA schedule. That's how words can be a little deceiving from time to time. They can make a story out of the fact that I missed minicamp, but it was really two OTA days, but (I) came to the first 10.”
If Rodgers says “bulls— eradicated from the building,” shouldn’t he have shown up and remained loyal to his stinky word? “Oh, I don't know. I'm sure I'll get fined for that," he said. He’ll be 41 in December. He is not Tom Brady. This will be his last chance in a 13-year run for a second Super Bowl.
“I’m running fast,” he said.
But at least he produced one championship and four MVPs in Green Bay. That’s a bit more than Jordan Love has done in a half-season.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.