To the credit of Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst, his institutional memory was accurate when it came to Jordan Love’s first month as a starting quarterback. There would be good parts and bad. There would be hopeful moments and struggles. There would also be the same coaching goals, supported by the same kind of personnel build.
Just like it was with Aaron Rodgers.
For the most part, the similarities in the results are striking through four games. Both Rodgers and Love began 2-2. Both accounted for eight touchdowns in their first four games. Both threw three interceptions. Their passing yards per game are the same zip code (240 for Rodgers, 225 for Love), while their completion percentage — given the small sample size of four games — is basically one bad quarter apart: 61.9 percent for Rodgers, 56 for Love.
But there’s an undeniable difference when you look at the team’s offensive roster build between the two players. And if there’s anything we’re learning about Love right now, it’s that he has been facing an uphill climb that Rodgers didn’t experience. Not just from the standpoint of many forgetting that Rodgers’ first season was a work in progress, but also due to the realities of the surrounding depth chart, which has been every bit the steep challenge that it.
looked like this offseason.
Come Monday night against the Las Vegas Raiders, Love will finally have his full complement of skill position players around him. What he won’t have is the wideout on the other sideline — former Packers receiver Davante Adams — who likely would have made a world of difference in Green Bay. And that’s where the difference stacks up for Love: The high-level veteran wideout he should have been playing with is nowhere to be found … which is different than how Rodgers had it when he kicked off his career as a starter in Green Bay in 2008.
For most football fans outside of the Packers’ hemisphere — and maybe even for some inside it — that has gotten lost in the first month of the season, particularly coming off a dreadful loss to the Detroit Lions that was a sobering look at the work ahead in Green Bay. We’ll get to the Lions loss in a moment, because it was an important audit when it comes to Love. First, let’s look back at what Gutekunst said about Rodgers’ first season as a starter and what he expected the realities to be with Love.
Here’s what Gutekunst told reporters at the NFL scouting combine about Rodgers’ first season as a starter, when the Packers finished 6-10: “We won some games early and had a really rough stretch in the middle. But I think there was a growing confidence to that year that, ‘Hey, we’ve got the next guy and now it’s just keep building.’”
Here’s what what Gutekunst told many of those same reporters on the verge of April’s NFL Draft, about Love’s path in 2023: “I think there’s going to be challenges. There’s no doubt about it. There’s always challenges in the NFL season. What those will be are kind of to be determined.”
Four games in, the clarifying has begun. What’s left exposed, again, is the significant difference between the offense Rodgers took over in 2008 versus the one Love is manning in 2023.
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While Rodgers walked into a roster that had just advanced to the NFC title game the season prior, the difference that mattered in his development was a trio of wideouts: 33-year-old Donald Driver, who was coming off his third Pro Bowl season; 25-year-old Greg Jennings, who was heading into his third season and blossoming into one of the best young receivers in the league; and a driven 24-year-old in James Jones, who was heading into his third season and well on his way to becoming a quality No. 3 receiver. Even the mixed-bag offensive line, which was average at best overall, had some continuity, with five starters playing in 73 of a possible 80 games.
Compare that to Love, who through four games has been dealing with a banged-up offensive line that has already lost its most talented player — left tackle David Bakhtiari — for the remainder of the season. Now pull back for the wider picture of the skill group, and what you see is a landslide of inexperience at the pass-catching positions. That includes three rookies — tight end Luke Musgrave, and wideouts Jayden Reed and Dontayvion Wicks — who have already had to play sizable roles.
The “experience” at the position: Two second-year players who have yet to settle into consistency, between the solid Romeo Doubs and the flashy but still largely boom-or-bust talent in Christian Watson.
