Love Adapts to New Reality
GREEN BAY, Wis. – For Jordan Love, his second NFL training camp would involve one of two scenarios. One, he’d be the Green Bay Packers’ starting quarterback. Or, Aaron Rodgers would return for his 14th season as the team’s starter and Love would wind up melting into the background.
Love found out which it would be at the airport while on his way to Green Bay.
“It’s obviously very great to have Aaron back just on this team,” Love said after Thursday’s practice. “Obviously, he’s a huge presence at the quarterback position and in the locker room, as well, and then as a leader on the team, so it’s great to have him back.”
Only Love knows the amount of truth in that statement and whether he felt like Charlie Brown getting the ball yanked from him by Lucy. As a competitor, backups would rather not be backups, after all. Regardless, after taking practically every 11-on-11 snap during the offseason practices to get him ready for the possibility that he’d be the team’s new starter, his reality is one that Love no doubt understood all along.
“The whole time I had to convince myself that I was going to be the starter,” Love said. “That’s the only way you can look at that situation. I feel like if you don’t, you won’t be ready. That’s how I looked at it the whole way. In my head, he wasn’t coming back, I’ve got to get myself ready to be the starter.”
For Love, it was one of the most awkward positions imaginable – stuck in the middle of a feud that he had no part of creating. It wasn’t Love’s fault that general manager Brian Gutekunst traded up in the first round of the 2020 draft to select him, setting in process the whole mess that ensued this offseason.
Given how Rodgers was the innocent man in the middle in 2006, 2007 and 2008 before replacing Brett Favre amid controversy, Rodgers made it a point to keep Love in the loop. According to Love, he and Rodgers talked a couple times before OTAs and a couple times after.
“I didn’t hold things from him,” Rodgers said on Wednesday. “I let him know where I was at mentally and what I was thinking about. And hopefully he appreciated that. I just felt that’s what I would want in that situation, just to hear from the guy. There’s a love and an appreciation and a friendship there, just like it was with me and Brett.”
While Rodgers was irked that the team drafted Love rather than a potential instant-impact performer after reaching the NFC Championship Game in 2019, that’s never been a factor in his relationship with Love. As was the case last year, Rodgers has been quick to share advice with Love as well as No. 3 quarterback Kurt Benkert.
“Me and Aaron have a good relationship,” Love said before pulling a Star Wars reference. “Obviously, it’s kind of like the Master and the Padawan kind of thing. Just trying to learn as much as I can from him. We have a great quarterback room and a lot of good conversations in there, and anytime there’s something in the quarterback room that Aaron feels I need to continue to improve on or do a better job, he’s right there to let me know – me and Kurt. He coaches us all the time and, obviously, having the three offensive coaches we have in that room [coach Matt LaFleur, offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and quarterbacks coach Luke Getsy], as well, it’s a lot of knowledge in there and things that for a young quarterback I can just learn from.”
Love’s up-and-down series of offseason practices have mirrored the start of his training camp. His first pass on Thursday was a wobbler to the sideline that was broken up by safety Vernon Scott. A little later, one of his passes landed in the middle of nowhere. But then he completed nine consecutive passes, including a ball to the sideline to Juwann Winfree, a tight-window bullet to Reggie Begelton and a sideline completion to Begelton. Moments later, though, his deep ball was easily intercepted by safety Christian Uphoff.
After missing out on the offseason practices and preseason games last summer, Love has a chance to build this year. Family Night is Saturday, followed by three preseason games. As Love noted, he hasn’t played in a game since the Senior Bowl on Jan. 25, 2020.
“I’m super-excited,” he said. “This is the moment I’ve been preparing for even since last year not having preseason. It’s almost like I’ve been training a year just for this first preseason game. I’m sure excited to get out there and get back to playing ball.”
