Jordan Love could be the silver lining on the Packers’ lost 2022 season

Jordan Love looked good in emergency duty vs. the Eagles. Now’s the time to throw him into the starting lineup and see if it lasts.

This was not how 2022 was supposed to pan out for the Green Bay Packers.

Aaron Rodgers put his squabbles with the management that had deigned to work out an exit plan in the case of his retirement in the rear view and signed a three-year, $150 million extension rather than leaving Wisconsin. Impact free agents De’Vondre Campbell and Rasul Douglas re-signed with the team. 2022 first round picks Quay Walker and Devonte Wyatt were set to team with an ascending Rashan Gary and push the defense to new heights.

Sure, the receiving corps was a massive question mark, but a depleted NFC left the opportunity for a fourth-straight 13-win season and a chance to break through to the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 12 years. Instead, the Packers are a relic in a conference that has passed them by.

Green Bay is 4-8 and hanging on for dear life at the fringes of the playoff race. A bad run defense has devolved into league’s worst. The ragged receiving corps that looked like the team’s Achilles heel has been as inconsistent as expected.

At the center of this is the worst version of Aaron Rodgers we’ve seen since his first season as a starter in 2008. The reigning MVP played through a broken thumb over the course of the past month before leaving Week 12’s 40-33 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles with multiple injuries.

This left comeback duties to Jordan Love, the player the Packers traded up to draft in 2020, subsequently accelerating any drama between Rodgers and the franchise that nearly ended in an offseason divorce. This did not seem like a good thing. The reason why Green Bay was happy to give its future Hall of Fame quarterback $50 million annually despite limited salary cap space and the raging whirlpool of off-the-field drama that comes with him was that Rodgers was coming off back-to-back MVP seasons, sure. But it was also because Love, in limited action, looked little like a worthy successor to his throne.

2022 is turning those tides. Love, pressed into his first meaningful duty of the season Sunday night, finally showed signs that he can be a starting quarterback in the NFL.

Love entered Week 12 in the fourth quarter of a 37-23 game and engineered a pair of scoring drives that put the Packers in position to potentially tie or win the game in regulation with one clutch defensive stop. That didn’t happen — the Eagles ran all over Green Bay en route to a truly baffling 363 rushing yards — but the third-year quarterback made his point. There was at least a kernel of truth to the preseason reports that he’d shown demonstrable progress over the past year.

Against a defense that’s allowed fewer yards than all but one team in the NFL this season, Love stood out. He completed six of nine passes for 113 yards and a touchdown. While Christian Watson’s burner speed and run-after-catch capabilities padded those stats, there was no denying Love’s passes looked better than they have at any point in his limited pro career.

Love didn’t just put together a solid stat line. He ran a tempo offense, made quick, decisive throws from the pocket before the Philly pass rush could affect his vision and found open receivers. Of his three incompletions:

  • one was the Jones drop above.
  • another was a throw on the run placed only where his receiver could get it rather than a potential 50/50 ball in the end zone.
  • the final one was this third down throw against his body, which could have been picked off and was, really, the only bad toss in his nine-pass spread in Week 12.

That last one is a concern, but it was the right read. Lead Cobb three yards two his right and it’s a nicely threaded touchdown. Instead, the Packers settled for a field goal and never saw the ball again.

This doesn’t mean Love is ready for a bigger role, just that he’s finally showcased the promise that convinced the Packers to make him a polarizing, Hall of Famer-alienating draft pick two-and-a-half years ago. 2022 is a small sample size, but that’s all we’ve known of Love in his brief time as an NFL quarterback. This small sample size? Significantly better than last year’s small sample size!

This puts the Packers in a position where they don’t have to rush Rodgers back from the rib injury and broken thumb that took him out of Sunday’s game. He may rush back anyway because he wants to play and could see the team’s decision to insert Love as a sign of disrespect; predicting a Rodgers reaction to anything at this point is tricky. From a football and franchise building standpoint, however, the best way to play out the final five games of the lost 2022 season is to see if Love can replicate the proficiency he showed after being unexpectedly thrown into the fourth quarter of a road game against the NFC’s top team.

That wouldn’t even necessarily be a changing of the guard at quarterback in Green Bay. Rodgers is still under contract through 2026 and though he’s 38 years old hadn’t really showed signs of aging until this fall — where he also had to contend with a weak WR corps, a beat-up offensive line and a host of nagging injuries. There’s a very real possibility he returns to form and gets back to annoying the NFC North next fall.

Love, on the other hand, is nearing the final inexpensive season of his rookie contract in 2023. The Packers will have to make a decision about whether to pick up his fifth-year team option that will likely clock in at just under $20 million. Since there’s no way Green Bay is going to be outlaying $70 million to quarterbacks in 2024, a breaking point is coming.

If Rodgers is the guy, it makes sense to give Love a chance to increase his trade value in a QB-needy NFL. If Rodgers isn’t, well, Love could really, really use those reps if he’s going to keep this team from spiraling.

Jordan Love finally looked like the quarterback the Packers desperately wanted him to be when they drafted him in 2020. Now, with Rodgers hurt and nothing to lose in a broken season, they can elevate him to the starting lineup and finally begin to assess the future of their quarterback position. Green Bay has plenty of problems to untangle moving forward. Having two viable passers would be a good one to have.

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