Jordan Rodgers Turns Heads With Assessment of Jeremiyah Love Before 2026 NFL Draft

The 2026 NFL Draft gets underway tonight, and Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love is sitting at the center of one of the loudest debates in the pre-draft conversation.

Most analysts agree he lands in the first round. The real friction is over just how high, and whether the Arizona Cardinals should spend the No. 3 pick on a running back.

That friction became very public Thursday morning on ESPN.

Jordan Rodgers on Jeremiyah Love at No. 3

ESPN analyst Jordan Rodgers made his position clear: Love should not be Arizona's pick at third overall.

"Under no circumstance can you take Jeremiyah Love No. 3," Rodgers said. "You're going to owe him $50 million in guaranteed money. That's more than Saquon Barkley, more than Christian McCaffery, more than Derrick Henry. You can't do that, especially when you don't have a quarterback. You don't have an offensive identity right now. You can't add a player like that and expect to then take the next step with a running back. It doesn't happen."

"Under no circumstance can you take Jeremiyah Love number three. ... He's not a generational player."@JRodgers11 doesn't believe Jeremiyah Love should go high in the draft 👀 pic.twitter.com/c7ycy7dAp0
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) April 23, 2026

From there, Rodgers moved beyond the financial argument and went after Love's prospect profile directly.

"I love Jeremiyah Love as a prospect, but also he's not a generational player," Rodgers said. "If you go back and look at college, he didn't do great against the best defenses he played. He got shut down last year in a bowl game against Ohio State, had like eight total yards. Miami shut him down Week 1, and then they didn't really play anybody after that. I just didn't see it."

Dan Orlovsky pushes back on RB draft value

Dan Orlovsky took the opposite side, and his argument started from a foundational place.

"The draft, to its inception, to its genesis, is to acquire talent," Orlovsky said. "Not to get the best value versus certain positions or whatnot. It's for the bad teams to get the good players. Arizona, obviously, bad team. They need good players. Everybody is saying this is a draft that has four or five-star, blue-chip prospects, Jeremiyah Love being one of them. Why are we overthinking this?"

Orlovsky then addressed the guaranteed money concern head-on, pointing to how the league's best-run organizations have handled running back contracts in recent years.

Jeremiyah Love posted a 4.36u 💨

Watch NFL Combine coverage on @nflnetwork (via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/yMbR16CDf2
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 28, 2026

"We have watched over the last couple of years, good organizations, great organizations like Philly, San Francisco, Baltimore, Green Bay, Kansas City, Buffalo all pay running backs $10 million plus," he said. "All those good organizations did it. Maybe we, all of us, are undervaluing what a running back actually is in the NFL."

That line of thinking deserves serious consideration on draft night. Love posted 1,372 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns last season at 6.9 yards per carry, and he ran a 4.36-second 40-yard dash at the combine. The talent is not seriously in question. The debate is almost entirely about draft capital and positional philosophy, which is exactly the kind of argument that tends to age poorly when the player turns out to be very good.

The 2026 NFL Draft begins tonight at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, ESPN, and NFL Network.

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