Aaron Rodgers plans to play in Week 13. Now the Packers have a tough decision to make

Rodgers feels he’s healthy enough to retain ownership over Chicago. But starting Jordan Love could be better for the team’s future.

In any normal Green Bay Packers season, the decision to start Aaron Rodgers or Jordan Love would be an easy one. 2022 is not a normal Green Bay Packers season.

Rodgers, beset by injury, a weak receiving corps and an offensive line that hasn’t lived up to its potential, is suffering through one of his worst years as a starter. His team is 4-8 with a three percent chance of making the playoffs, per FiveThirtyEight. He’s also playing with a broken thumb on his throwing hand and departed Week 12’s loss to the Philadelphia Eagles with rib discomfort.

That left Jordan Love to handle comeback duties. While he couldn’t lead Green Bay to a road upset, he acquitted himself well enough to record his finest appearance as a pro so far. This left the Packers with a good problem to have; if their QB1 couldn’t play, the QB2 they drafted two years ago looked good enough to be a proper fill-in against the Chicago Bears and, just possibly, stake his claim as the team’s quarterback of the future.

But, as of Tuesday, Rodgers expects to be back in the lineup against the franchise he’s famously crushed past decade-plus.

This throws a wrench in any plan to give Love the start in hopes of seeing whether Sunday night’s impressive performance was sustainable. There’s no real need for Rodgers to play when a 4-8 team with hardly any playoff hopes takes on a 3-9 one that’s effectively already eliminated. But keeping Rodgers happy, especially when it comes to the matter of the quarterback Green Bay drafted in 2020 who opened the rift between MVP and the only franchise he’s ever played for, has been imperative to the Packers’ roster-building plans.

Giving Love an opportunity to show off his growth, particularly against the defense that allowed Mike White and the New York Jets to throw for 300-plus yards and three touchdowns in Week 12, would likely spark rumors about Love’s ascension to the full-time job but wouldn’t mean that’s the case. The third-year quarterback only has one guaranteed season left on his rookie contract (along with a team option worth roughly $20 million). If Green Bay is going to trade him, this offseason would be the time. More game tape like the one he put together in Philly would only increase his value.

Starting Rodgers would dampen that value but assure a quarterback with a penchant for off-field drama that he remains the team’s unquestioned leader as long as he’s ready to go. Turning down his publicly stated desire to return would alienate a player who signed a $150 million contract extension last spring and who carries a dead cap space hit of just under $100 million in 2023. If Rodgers chooses, he can effectively devastate this team.

That leaves head coach Matt LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst with a fine line to walk. Rodgers has no interest in stepping aside. Love played well enough in emergency duty that he deserves another look in a lost season. The Packers have to weigh a reigning MVP and future Hall of Famer, late in his career but capable of bouncing back to form after getting crushed by multiple outside factors in 2022, against the player they drafted to be their future, his trade value and their potential Aaron Rodgers exit strategy.

That’s a delicate balance. While the small sample size proficiency of Jordan Love against a team that hadn’t prepped for him may swing some fans toward the younger quarterback, there’s much more in play here. Will the Packers give Rodgers the chance to have his name replace Virginia McCaskey’s in the “ownership” section of the Bears’ Wikipedia entry for another night and kick this decision down the road a week? Or will they opt to rest their starter and see what Love can do?

The most likely outcome is the former. But hey, this hasn’t been a likely season for the Packers to begin with.

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