The drama going on in Green Bay is no secret to anyone who watches football. What started with Adam Schefter’s notification has turned into the Packer’s worst nightmare. The Jordan love situation has been no drama to anybody who is in watching football. But now Rogers has finally made a statement that was coming, it was in inevitable. Rogers does not wanna return to the team, he does not want to be a part of the organization, and he wants to move on.
The problem with this situation is the Packers don’t want to let him go which is only gonna make the situation worse. Now they have a young quarterback in Jordan love who they have literally put no faith in throughout this entire process. Everyone is talking about how Rogers wants to be traded and where he wants to go. But nobody’s been talking about how Jordan Love and if he is even ready to be an NFL quarterback. Let’s Rewind That Tape on Jordan Love.
Jordan I was drafted in the first round of the Packers draft in 2020 despite needs on offense to help Rogers get more weapons for the upcoming year. The young quarterback was a good prospect out of Utah State, and had a lot of potential. Social media would immediately break after the pig as nobody was expecting this from the Packers and this would also be inevitable for the eventual Rogers departure. So why did the Packers even take this guy. Well in college he was a pretty good quarterback and was high on the draft boards. The first thing that you really see though when you look at his stats is that Jordan didn’t have a great senior year. His team ended up with seven wins barely making it into a bowl game with eventually lose to Kent State. To give credit to team two of the losses we’re going to talk 20 teams at the time including one being to the eventual national champions in LSU. You go back one more year and Utah state once again led by Jordan love had a pretty decent year with 10 wins and two losses in the regular season. Both losses would also be against the top 25 teams including one against Michigan State as their first game of the season. So when you really think about it Love doesn’t really check the box when it comes to winning big games but I think in his second year we saw him so that he can win. It doesn’t make me really high on Jordan but this is just the surface.
Many people will be quick to blame Matt Wells who was his coach in 2017 and 18 as the reason for Loves drop off in his performance and production. But many teams were still high on Love after his fantastic season in 2018. Giving Love the benefit of the doubt Let’s drop into his first game in 2018 where Utah State took on Michigan State.
This game Michigan State is ranked number 11 and Utah state was unranked so for them to even be in this game was definitely an upset alert. We start off early in the first quarter on Utah State’s first drive. On the third and three at their own 33, Jordan gets way out of the pocket and starts moving on the run after immediate pressure. He then throws a perfect pass down the MSU sideline. This is something you don’t see often in such a young quarterback and shows what he will do in pressure situations. You look at the tape and Jordan also makes a lot of the easier throws that are needed instead of always shooting for the long shots. Another positive for Jordan was game is his ability to throw the slants very tight and his ability to read the defense. When a quarterback gets over the pocket and throws over the middle on these slants they have to be ready to watch what the defense does. Two interceptions that he threw in this game we’re not entirely on him. On the first one he was hit while he was thrown and on the second one the ball was tipped at the line of scrimmage and popped into the air.
We will jump to later in the year where the 21st ranked Utah State Aggies took on the 23rd ranked Boise State Broncos for a chance at the Mountain West title game. After a good first start to the game, Utah faced a second and 10 at their own 43-yard line with five minutes and 44 seconds to go. Love dropped back and thought he had a man but he threw an interception straight to the linebacker. It was an athletic play but one that he should’ve already seen coming as soon as he dropped back in the pocket. This is one of the examples that I think a lot of people were talking about when they were looking at Jordan. He has a lot of potential but he makes some silly mistakes that would end up costing them in this game as Boise State got their momentum back and eventually won the game. Another positive
Set a lot of positives and negatives to Jordan’s performance from his college career. But the Packer’s lack of faith so quickly so early in the air and I just processed shows us that they don’t believe that he’s ready to be an NFL quarterback. From the looks of it sometimes he shows flashes of NFL readiness. But if you look at the overall big picture I don’t think love is completely ready for this stage. There’s always a development process that goes along when you’re really young quarterback in the NFL. This process is one that Love is still going through and I will need to continue as he grows. I do think that he will end up being the week one starter, but I don’t think the Packers should be too optimistic about this season. Maybe they hold on to Rodgers, but that is looking bleak right now. Rodgers has not mentored his younger counterpart as well the team wanted him to either. It is wait and see situation in Green Bay, but if Jordan Love starts I don’t see the Packers making the playoffs this year.
Top Image by Getty Images.