Packers and Jordan Love reach a four-year contract extension

The Green Bay Packers have their quarterback of the long-term future. On Friday, the team agreed to give Jordan Love a four-year, $220 million contract extension, tying him to Green Bay through 2028 and ending Love's training camp hold-in. His $55 million yearly average ties the NFL highest-paid salary in history. Ian Rapoport first reported the news.

Love was already under contract through 2024. Technically, this is already Love's third deal with the Packers, because last offseason the team declined his fifth-year option and gave him a short-term, bridge one-year extension to keep him under control contract-wise.

While Jordan Love has only a season as the starter after the Packers traded Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets, the team felt comfortable paying Love this type of deal because they know him very well, and his development trajectory is much clearer inside the building.

"The nice thing about having a guy in your building for the last four years is you absolutely know who he is," Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said earlier this year. "Again, there's no guarantees of anything going forward, but we know how he's going to respond and how he's going to react and how he's going to work instead of signing a player that has not been in your building and guaranteeing all that to him. Certainly having four years with him, I think, gives us a lot of comfort and what he's all about and how his teammates look at him and the organization looks at him."

Trajectory

The Packers surprised the football world in 2020 when they traded up from pick 30 to 26 to select Jordan Love in the first round. At that time, Aaron Rodgers was 36 years old and had four years left on his deal with the team.

Brian Gutekunst projected a smooth transition, but that wasn't always the case. Over the next couple of years, Rodgers went back to playing at an extremely high level, winning two MVP awards, and the Packers reached the NFC Championship Game twice in a row.

Over his first three years in the NFL, Love had only one start — and it was a tough one, with a four-day notice after Rodgers got Covid, and the Packers lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2021.

In 2022, Green Bay finally had a glimpse of what Love could become when he entered a game against the Philadelphia Eagles after Rodgers got hurt. He played well in a limited number of snaps, and even though it didn't guarantee anything, it gave them hope.

After a difficult season in which the Packers missed the playoffs in 2022, the management decided to finally move on. They traded Rodgers to the New York Jets and gave the keys of a new offense to Jordan Love.

It wasn't always pretty, and the first half of the 2023 season was full of ups and downs. From week 9 on, though, Love established himself as one of the best quarterbacks in football.

The high-level performance allowed the Packers to reach the playoffs and beat the Dallas Cowboys in the wild card round — which included a big-time performance from Love and a play that encapsulated Love's development. He saw a zero blitz, adjusted protection, and threw a perfect touchdown pass to rookie wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks.

"That zero blitz is a prime example of something that, going into the year, we made a strong emphasis to make sure that we had answers for when people wanted to all-out us," Matt LaFleur later said. "It's time spent, value received, so you got to judge how much time you want to put into that. A matter of a few seconds to get Tuck(er Kraft) to stay in on a protection and to hang in there when you got a free runner at you. I just thought that was so impressive, and I think that's just a great example of what he is, the growth that's transpired with him."

Even though the season ended with a disappointing interception against the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round, the Packers are banking on that Love's final stretch of the season was more a developmental track and less of an outlier.

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