The Aaron Rodgers departure is all but official. Tabloids have closed the book on his chapter with the Green Bay Packers as the team looks towards the future. Once Gutekunst finds sufficient value and pulls the trigger, the focus will shift towards a lovely future.
I am talking about, of course, Jordan Love, a player who could not have been drafted under any more unfortunate circumstances. If you gave any NFL rookie a list of blind destinations with caveats, nobody would have selected the one that read: Sit behind an aging and disgruntled MVP, put up with his conspiracy theories, and be the crux of a years-long drama cycle. That’s putting Love’s situation mildly.
Regardless, he is slated to be Green Bay’s starting quarterback this season, and he will be for the foreseeable future if his play is serviceable. Despite the legacy of Packers quarterbacks, there aren’t necessarily expectations that Love is going to be the next Hall of Fame quarterback to suit up for the team. However, considering the similarities in circumstances of Love’s draft and ascension to that of his predecessor, it is hard to not have high hopes for the young player. The history, coupled with these expectations, is setting the stage for an interesting reaction from Packers fans and NFL fans at large.
There are three different levels of fan reactions to be analyzed here: hometown fans, divisional foes, and greater fans across the league. Divisional foes already hate Love and assume he is going to flop. The general public is likely paying more attention to Rodgers than any concern with how Love is going to play. The most pressing of which is how the lifelong diehard Green Bay fans react to Love’s first career start in the post-Rodgers era.
It’s important to note that Packers fans have never been more divided. At least, they haven’t been this divided since the last transition from a generational QB. The Lambeau faithful did not meet the beginning of Rodgers’ career with fanfare. There were “Packer fans and Favre fans,” and this led to the early returns of the Rodgers era producing increased scrutiny from fans. Rodgers was not Favre. That simple fact mattered to Green Bay supporters a ton, until the wins inevitably made that irrelevant. More on that later.
Love walks into a strikingly parallel situation: Love isn’t Rodgers. No matter what he does, he will never be Rodgers. If, by chance, Love becomes a winning quarterback in the NFL, who he is or isn’t won’t matter. Wins fix everything, and Love has a unique opportunity to rewrite the doomed script he was given on draft day.
The major difference between the current Love movement and the previous Rodgers takeover is that Favre was not addled with controversy at the time. Favre has since outed himself as a certifiably not-great-dude, but Favre wasn’t spreading vaccine conspiracy theories while on the run from the woke mob. Rodgers’ recent forays into ayahuasca, coupled with his pseudo-intellectual darkness retreat extravaganza, have both served to propagate his Christ complex while making him one of the more polarizing figures in the NFL today. There are few “so so” takes about Rodgers these days. Either you think he’s the smartest dude ever or you think he’s an idiot.
It is that embroilment in controversy that will lead to a mixed fanfare from fans at Lambeau. Love may yet be good, but he’s not that guy. Green Bay fans are as loyal as they come, but there will be a rough adjustment period for them as three decades of Hall of Fame QB play goes away.
The only baggage that Love carries into his first season at the helm is the burden that Brian Gutekunst placed upon him in the 2020 draft. Regardless of whether or not his selection was a decision made in panic, it has placed an incredulous amount of pressure on a player who has the biggest shoes to fill in the league. How he responds will define his career. It will follow him for as long as he plays. But if the fans welcome him with open arms, it may make this transition much easier than it would otherwise be.
