How Jordan Love impressed Packers after rough start to 2023 season

After the Green Bay Packers started last season at 2-5, general manager Brian Gutekunst suggested the campaign's final 10 games would help the club determine if quarterback Jordan Love could serve as a long-term replacement for future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers.

How Love handled that situation ultimately resulted in the 2020 first-round draft pick receiving a four-year, $220M deal from the Packers this summer.

"The thing that I was most impressed by last year was when we were sitting at 2–5 and 3–6, I didn’t feel him ever wavering in his belief, first and foremost with himself and everything that we are doing," Green Bay head coach Matt LaFleur said about Love during a chat with NFL insider Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. "I feel like it is rare. A guy gets discouraged, or a guy’s got a lot of fight in him. He doesn’t allow the moment, whether good or bad, dictate what happens next. He just continues to work and grind. He’s seen the benefits of it."

Green Bay traded Rodgers to the New York Jets in the spring of 2023 and then signed Love to a short-term contract extension that really only guaranteed him a spot on the team's roster through last season. Questions about Love's future hovered over the Packers as they fell to 3-6 in November, but he then won six of eight starts to guide the team to the postseason.

Love's performances in the 48-32 wild-card playoff win at the Dallas Cowboys and in the narrow 24-21 divisional-round loss at the San Francisco 49ers convinced individuals such as Gutekunst and LaFleur the Packers had a franchise player at the sport's most important position. LaFleur indicated to Breer that Love spending the bulk of his first three pro seasons as Rodgers' primary backup prepared the 25-year-old for the ups and downs he experienced as a first-time full-time NFL QB1.

"I’ve said it a million times," LaFleur explained. "A lot of quarterbacks in this league are talented. They’re just not ready for the situation. They don’t have the right people around them. It’s such a different game, in terms of how much information they have to take in, in order to process and be able to play fast. There are too many examples of guys that have sat for at least some time to learn and then go play."

According to Pro Football Reference stats, Love finished the 2023 season ranked second in the league with 32 touchdown passes and ninth among qualified players with a 62.1 adjusted QBR. As of Monday afternoon, DraftKings Sportsbook listed Love fifth among the betting favorites at +1400 odds to win the Most Valuable Player Award for the upcoming campaign.

"I think all that goes back to remembering where you came from, remembering being the backup, being behind the guy that was in that position, seeing how he goes about his business," Love said about going from Rodgers' backup to one of the league's highest-paid stars. "And just remembering my first year, when there were a lot of question marks, how this team had my back. Now we’re in a different spot. So don’t change up. Be a good teammate. Be all these things that I’ve been."

Gutekunst and LaFleur hope what Love has been will prove to be merely a preview of what he'll become over the next handful of years.