Time is now for Jordan Love to make his move
Facing an old friend, the new face of the Green Bay Packers has a chance to make a statement. This is a massive night for Jordan Love in Pittsburgh.
They were horrified of the great unknown. Aaron Rodgers remained one of the finest quarterbacks in the sport, so Aaron Rodgers called the shots. The Green Bay Packers were A-OK letting their star quarterback drag their good name through the mud via trusted surrogates and minions the summer of 2021.
He wanted the GM fired. He finally returned.
He won another MVP. He disappeared in the playoffs vs. San Francisco.
Rather than seek a bounty of draft picks — Russell Wilson netted a king’s ransom that same spring — Green Bay made Rodgers the sport’s richest quarterback. And after a painfully lethargic 2022 season, the Packers finally moved on. Go Long first reported their intentions. Ready or not, it was Jordan Love Time.
On Sunday night, the two quarterbacks will square off at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh.
To his credit, Steelers Rodgers looks much better than Jets Rodgers. He’s got his team in the AFC North driver’s seat and looked damn good in defeat last week in Cincinnati. Surely, many Packers fans will wax nostalgic. Despite all emotions, despite the darkness retreat, despite all the shots on McAfee through an ultra-messy exit, Rodgers will go down as a beloved figure. On Thursday, he insinuated that he’ll retire a Packer one day. Perhaps the mayor finds an alley way to name after him.
But there’s exactly zero doubts.
GM Brian Gutekunst made the 100-percent correct decision to draft Love in 2020.
The Packers organization made the 100-percent correct decision to trade Rodgers in 2023. Their only mistake, as advocated in these pages, was trading him too late.
Jordan Love — for all gifts, all warts — is absolutely talented enough to get this Packers team to a Super Bowl. And win it.
Sunday night has the potential to catapult his young career.
This will be a signature moment.
From Day 1, the plan was genius. Yes, a wide receiver might’ve helped in the now. But selecting a quarterback in 2020 had the potential to secure a half-century of quarterback bliss. Gutekunst realized that Green Bay was uniquely positioned to take a raw project at the bottom of the first round. Entire drafts can pass without any worthy long-term answers. This 2020 group was special so the GM capitalized.
Most NFL teams don’t have the guts or infrastructure to follow such a quarterback blueprint.
General managers are petrified of pissing off their current quarterback and welcoming the exact scenario that played out. Rodgers was livid. Rodgers, from afar, set the thermostats at 400 degrees inside 1265 Lombardi Avenue before returning for his airing of grievances press conference. Gutekunst, like his predecessor, was not afraid of making the unpopular decision — one that’d put his own career on the line.
Owners don’t have the patience to draft a quarterback and let that quarterback sit for three years to adequately develop. Billionaires across the league chime in on draft decisions all the time because, well, it’s their team dammit. They can do whatever they’d like. Such is Green Bay’s inherit advantage over the rest of the league. Football people forever make the football decisions. Most all owners conversely view drafting a quarterback in the first round with a future Hall of Famer already in-house as taking a match to their own luxury suites.
Blasphemy.
Truth is, there’s a good chance those owners will be left scrambling when they’ve got no choice but to start a new quarterback.
Truth is, most rookie quarterbacks fall flat on their face because they’re not ready.
Even when the plan is to redshirt, calls for the rookie to play become too loud for owners to ignore. That’s why it’s smart for contending teams to plan ahead. In 2017, there was zero need for the Kansas City Chiefs to vault Patrick Mahomes into duty. And to the extreme, the Packers let both Rodgers and Love learn for three full seasons behind Canton-bound quarterbacks. Behind the scenes, they both matured into completely new quarterbacks. Each supplied a hint of everything to come, too. (Rodgers in ‘07 vs. Dallas, Love in ‘22 vs. Philly.)
In Year 1, Love started 3-6… and then turned it on. No quarterback was better from mid-November on.
In Year 2, Love sprained his MCL in Week 1 and injured his groin in Week 8. Both injuries zapped his athleticism. His play was more of a roller-coaster.
Now — in Year 3 as a starter, Year 6 as a pro — it’s time. It’s on Love to ascend to the league’s elites. He was paid accordingly. Green Bay safely escaped the financial hit from re-signing Rodgers and made a historic trade for Micah Parsons. Bruising Josh Jacobs sets a tone. And since ‘22, Gutekunst has drafted six wide receivers in the first five rounds. A group that’s now getting healthy with the imminent return of burner Christian Watson.
If Matt LaFleur’s going to get to his first Super Bowl in his seventh year on the job, he’ll need to unleash Jordan Love in full. This 2025 season, to date, has been a mixed bag. Special traits are evident. Take Green Bay’s 27-23 win against Arizona last week. Man, I loved the sequence at the end of the third quarter. From the pocket, Love scans the field. With all receivers blanketed, he takes off.
One problem: 5-foot-10, 195-pounder Budda Baker.
Baker, arguably the hardest hitter in the NFL, lights Love up with a collision straight out of the 1970s.
And… the quarterback barely reacts. He flips the ball to an official, buckles his left chinstrap and glances back toward the defense with a wide smile as if to let Baker know he didn’t hurt him. The very next snap, from Arizona’s 28-yard line, Love isn’t gun shy. Flushed again, he tears through one defender’s arms and uses his long stride to storm upfield for a 12-yard gain. Wisely, he slides.
This is the mettle Gutekunst bet on the night of April 23, 2020.
He knew Love was raw, but he also knew Love was mentally tough enough to handle both collisions like this and Rodgers’ monstrous shadow.
On cue, Love capped this drive with a seven-yard touchdown pass to tight end Tucker Kraft and made enough plays late to secure a victory.
Sturdy in the pocket. Monster arm. Athletic. Tough. However you slice it, he’s the quintessential modern quarterback. Love’s completion percentage has spiked from 63.1 to 69.3, good for seventh in the NFL. His passer rating (108.1) is also seventh. He has thrown only two interceptions. But there are still moments that leave you wanting more. Given his unique development, his physical gifts, all of the weapons, the addition of Parsons, no, the Packers should not get caught into these games of footsie with inferior rosters.
There’s no reason that Love cannot liquidate opponents, no reason he shouldn’t have the MVP-level season Rodgers enjoyed his third year as the starter. Peak Rodgers, in 2011, was a sight to behold. In all, Rodgers threw for 4,643 yards and 45 touchdowns with only six interceptions. It didn’t matter that his defense gave up 400 yards in 11 games that season. He crushed the will of teams by the third quarter.
From the press box, you could feel the storm coming. It was inevitable.
He eyed that single-high safety, threw deep, skipped his way into the end zone to celebrate.
The week Rodgers won his first of four MVPs, I chatted with one of his equals: New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees.
“One of the greatest of any player to play the position,” Brees said. “It was fun to watch. Obviously we all battle it out on Sunday, and then one of the more fun things is to come in on Monday morning and watch those guys and the games they’ve played. There are little subtle things you can pick up. Certainly you just watch it as a fan and say, ‘That’s pretty impressive.’”
For that piece, former Packer great Lynn Dickey also weighed in.
He put Rodgers’ MVP season this way:
“It was almost perfect. It was about as perfect as you could get, especially on a team that didn’t run the ball that well and with a defense that had a really tough year. In the history of the league, it was right up there. … Rarely do you find a guy who is very accurate, with a strong arm and he’s real smart and he can run. He’s got all the pieces you’d ever want.
“It’s just hard to imagine that the Packers won’t be knocking on the door because of Aaron Rodgers alone. Every year he’s playing — I’ll guarantee it — the Packers will be knocking on the door.”
They knocked, and knocked, and knocked and failed to even get to another Super Bowl the next 11 seasons. Finally, the Packers dared to be better. One comatose effort against the Detroit Lions in a 2022 season finale was the final straw for Gutekunst, LaFleur and president Mark Murphy.
No doubt, those 2011 Packers were more experienced than this 2025 version, but the elite passers elevate everyone around them.
That’s Love’s job. That’s why he’s paid $55 million per season.
The days of hand-holding should be over. There’s a gear LaFleur hasn’t tapped into quite yet with his quarterback.
All parties are naturally downplaying the building hype. This is one of 17 games. Green Bay and Pittsburgh reside in different conferences. But I don’t know, man. Here’s thinking the hype is completely warranted because Sunday night’s glow represents a golden opportunity for the new face of the Packers franchise to make his mark.
Last week, Old Man Flacco unlooped his belt and doled out some corporal punishment. Mike Tomlin’s defense has never looked so feeble. This 33-31 loss was an insult to everything Greg Lloyd, Kevin Greene, Levon Kirkland, Joey Porter, Troy Polamalu and James Harrison built. Pittsburgh is also a fitting site for Love’s ascent. This is where the Packers dropped to 3-6 back in 2023 before the quarterback’s Toyotathon tear. He wasn’t fully formed that day, and it showed. “We’re not leaning on the fact that we’re young,” Watson said afterward. “We’re losing more games than we want to, so it’s a tough situation.”
Now, the Packers are the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
This playoff-like atmosphere will be as close as Green Bay gets to football in January… where the results have been rocky for Love. A perfect test.
The nation will be watching.
Rodgers will be on the other sideline.
Ignore the pleasantries. Yes, as one coach detailed, Rodgers helped Love more than people think their days together. He described the vet as an exceptional mentor under rough circumstances. Yes, Rodgers is currently saying all of the right things to reporters in Wisconsin and Pittsburgh. If anyone learned anything through his Packers exit, it’s to judge the Complicated Fella by his actions, not his words. You better believe the Steelers quarterback is dying to tear up the team that showed him the door. Exactly like Brett Favre in that Vikings purple. That’s his right. He’s a competitor. He believes he can still win a Super Bowl and did not get to leave the Packers on his terms.
Green Bay correctly transitioned, and now?
Jordan Love is due for his own vintage performance.
ICYMI:
I can't remember the last time the collective media cheered so hard for one player in the NFL. He's a good, not great, QB who has kind of shown us who he is. Yet the media keeps acting like he's THIS close to being the next great QB out of Green Bay.
Stop forcing the narrative, please