It’s hard to pin down the 2023 Green Bay Packers, because we haven’t seen them play. Their division rivals have clear-cut trajectories. The Detroit Lions are looking to build upon a promising upswing. The Chicago Bears will take a crack at grazing mediocrity. And the Minnesota Vikings are ready to run things back with another rendition of their perennially upper-mid roster. But as we await the official opening of the Jordan Love mystery box, the Packers could land anywhere from NFC North champions to dark-horse Caleb Williams contenders.
Suddenly, with Rodgers and his friend group having migrated to New York, the Packers are extremely young. This has inevitably come across throughout spring practices, as Love works to build rapport with an offensive arsenal that is currently composed entirely of rookies and sophomores. At least one prominent talking head has seen enough. On his show last week, Colin Cowherd proclaimed, “I have never sold my stock on a football team in an OTA faster than Green Bay’s right now…. I think we’re going into what the Packers were in the ‘80s – kind of irrelevant.”
OTA and minicamp noise has really picked up steam the past few years, it’s just a symptom of the NFL running circles around every other major sport. Sometimes it’s interesting stuff, and sometimes it produces headlines that are laughable by the time the season arrives. Ahead of the 2021 season, news out of Cincinnati was that Joe Burrow looked awful as he worked his way back from an MCL tear, and that Ja’Marr Chase couldn’t catch an NFL football because it was different from the college ones.
The Cincinnati Bengals made an improbable run to the Super Bowl. Burrow and Chase were phenomenal, and immediately hailed as a duo set to terrorize the AFC for years to come. Point is, with a long way to go between now and training camp, I’m not convinced anything we could possibly hear, outside of injuries, is sufficient enough to start writing death certificates. Frankly, with half the draft class getting first-team reps on offense (and with the veterans being last year’s rookies), it’s hard to imagine the headlines looking any different at this stage. But perhaps Cowherd’s premature articulation is to be expected from a man who doesn’t know Packers stock can’t actually be sold.
The back half of his quote is what really throws me off. The Packers are a team set in their ways, which consist of drafting, developing, and extending homegrown players. Throughout the Rodgers era, fans and media clamored for an “all-in” approach, pretty much every time a star at a position of need hit the open market. In most cases, that star proceeded to sign an affordable one-year deal with the Kansas Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, or Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
What that’s created is a sort of two-timeline approach. Not as explicit as, say, what the Golden State Warriors have in place – an aging veteran core with a coalition of heir-apparents in their early 20s. However, the Packers have been steadily hitting on a lot of their premium draft picks and rewarding them when the time comes. As such, they have cornerstones in place like Jaire Alexander, Rashan Gary, Elgton Jenkins, Kenny Clark, Aaron Jones, and David Bakhtiari. Next in line are guys like Christian Watson, Quay Walker, A.J. Dillon, and Jon Runyan.
I agree with Cowherd that the league is increasingly quarterback-centric, and what is to become of this year’s team starts and ends with Jordan Love. However, it feels as if Rodgers’ departure has muddied the fact that the Packers have a solid talent infrastructure in place. If Love is rendered unsalvageable at the end of 2023, Green Bay will likely be ideally positioned to plug in an arm from the promising 2024 class that consists of Williams, Drake Maye, Quinn Ewers, and Michael Penix. That player would join a deep, promising roster.
Cowherd’s claim that the Packers are headed for a prolonged stay in the league’s cellar contrasts sharply with the way they’ve laid out their long-term strategy. If any team is destined to become the Packers of the ‘80s it’s, the Los Angeles Rams, who have repeatedly shipped away draft pick after draft pick to acquire star after star, all to be left with a roster devoid of young talent. While they’ve done the equivalent of continuing to drink feverishly just to avoid the comedown and the gnarly hangover that inevitably follows, they’ve only created a monstrous, supercharged hangover that feels likely to hit them in the next year or so.
Now let’s talk about that final word – irrelevant. Even as Rodgers fully integrates into New York, the Packers have continued to dominate the news cycle and secured a league-high five primetime games, plus a Thanksgiving showdown in Detroit. All eyes are on this storied franchise as it navigates a changing of the guard for the first time since 2008. Win or lose, everyone will be tuning in to see what the future holds for Love and the reload at-large. Don’t expect headlines like “Jordan Love and Jayden Reed Look Like They’ve Been Playing Together For 10 Years.” But definitely don’t expect this team to fall off the map, something that’s going to be incredibly difficult to do given an NFC North that remains wide open. Frankly, a soft landing is something they’ve sacrificed for.
