After many years of uncertainty, the Green Bay Packers have found a solution at backup quarterback.
It took a couple of years, but 2020 first-round pick Jordan Love‘s development is starting to bear fruit. He looked sensational in last week’s preseason game against the New Orleans Saints, beyond an admittedly pale statline. A 50% completion percentage for a paltry 113 yards and 4.7 yards per attempt doesn’t exactly jump off the page, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Pro Football Focus has given Love rave reviews this preseason. See the tweets from Peter Bukowski below to hear a different side of the statistical story:
To summarize: Love looks good. He’s looked quite good, in fact. The drops mentioned above are emblematic of a young and inexperienced receiving corps, which has been well-documented this offseason. Actually watching Love play reinforces the notion that he has been absolutely on the money. Love has been significantly better than anyone outside the state of Wisconsin would give him credit for, considering the unique circumstances of his draft selection. By taking Love in the first round, the Packers caused the entire fanbase to go up in a ball of flames. All of the Aaron Rodgers retirement drama only fanned the fire.
Was the pick a reach? Sure. However, Love is still on the team, and it looks like he is finally ready to step up and be a confident backup quarterback if they call upon him to play in 2022. The initial projections of Love being the heir apparent to the throne are murky these days. But Love is still, at worst, slotting in as a high-upside backup.
The security of a quality backup QB has immense value for Green Bay. Despite his prowess, Rodgers, 38, isn’t getting any younger. This, coupled with his lack of credible vaccination, put him at risk of missing games. Football is inherently violent, so there is no telling what could happen to any player in any given year. That’s why depth is essential. General manager Brian Gutekunst knows that.
Love’s recent emergence comes at a perfect time. For the last two years, Rodgers has gone relatively unscathed. If you’re a believer in the law of averages, it could mean Rodgers is due to miss some time. Love had to fill in for that one game against the Kansas City Chiefs last year, but otherwise he’s only seen garbage-time action. You never know when the hand of god/the devil/Anthony Barr will impose its will on an unsuspecting QB.
As Love cements his status as a quality backup, other NFC North teams have surely noticed. Across the St. Croix, the Minnesota Vikings have been writhing in pain watching Kellen Mond and Sean Mannion flounder despite countless opportunities to prove they deserve to stay in the NFL. Not long after Love’s standout performance, Minnesota’s new general manager, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, wasted no time flipping a conditional seventh-round pick for Nick Mullens.
Mullens is also a great backup quarterback. He looked fantastic for the San Francisco 49ers when he had to fill in, and his unabashed gunslinging style endeared him to the entire league during that brief time. Adding him to the Vikings will give the fanbase peace as they also deal with a starting quarterback who’s had a good string of health recently and refuses to get a scientifically proven vaccine.
The dynamic between starter and backup is now fairly similar in Minnesota and Green Bay. Each starter is as consistent as they come; the teams know exactly what to expect from Kirk Cousins and Rodgers on any given Sunday. They both have individual standards of excellence that seldom deviate from the norm.
As for their backups, both teams now stray from the leaguewide norm of game-managing backup quarterbacks. The tradition in the NFL is not to take risks, and the backup quarterback is a perfect embodiment of that mentality. The fact that Mannion still had a job as a primary backup after all these years tells that tale well enough. The continued employment of guys like Nathan Peterman, Sam Darnold, and Andy Dalton only adds to the evidence. High-risk, high-reward players like Mullens and Love are often only kept around as third-stringers who only see the field in dire emergencies. That was the case for Mullens; he took over for C.J. Beathard (a real game manager) and lit the league on fire for a few weeks.
Mullens and Love are stylistically similar players. They’re both gunslingers — Mullens perhaps a bit more so, as he went to the same college as Brett Favre, the original Green Bay gunslinger. Love was known in college for his big arm and ability to make sensational plays while simultaneously being turnover prone. They can sometimes be risky, but when these players are in a groove, it’s sensational to watch.
It is fair to wonder whether or not Minnesota saw what the Packers were doing with Love and opted to go a similar route to maximize their backup QB’s upside. Previous game-managing backups in Green Bay have not fared well. Fans remember all too well the horrors of Brett Hundley and DeShone Kizer. Love is slated to be the best backup quarterback in green and gold since Matt Flynn a decade ago. If it’s at all possible to ignore the circumstances of his acquisition, Love is in a good spot for the Packers.
Being a “good backup” is surely not on Love’s list of goals, but it will have to do for now. He is a valuable piece to a Super Bowl-or-bust team, and his role is every bit as important as the depth for the rest of the squad. It remains to be seen when his opportunity to shine will come, but he and the fanbase can take comfort in knowing that he finally has value. Once the comfort of that role sets in and the pressure rolls off his shoulders, Love will be golden.
