Comparing First 40 Starts After Jordan Love Beat Aaron Rodgers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Aaron Rodgers won four NFL MVPs and one Super Bowl during a prolific career with the Green Bay Packers. In making his 40th NFL start on Sunday night at the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jordan Love beat his mentor and showed a national television audience that he’s one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

Love completed 20 consecutive passes at one point in helping the Packers rally to a 35-25 victory. He finished 29-of-37 passing for 360 yards and three touchdowns, good for a career-high 134.2 passing rating.

It was the 40th start of Love’s career. Here’s a comparison between Rodgers and Love at the same point of their careers.

Completions

Rodgers: 856

Love: 810

Tonight the @packers' Jordan Love:

completed 20+ consecutive passes
threw for 350+ yards
threw 3+ TD passes
had 0 turnovers
took 0 sacks

No other QB in NFL history has done all of that in the same game. pic.twitter.com/WD8uF6oQKu
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) October 27, 2025

Attempts

Rodgers: 1,346

Love: 1,251

Completion Percentage

Rodgers: 63.6

Love: 64.7

An inaccurate passer during his first two seasons as the starter, Love has completed an excellent 70.9 percent of his passes this season. That’s the fourth-best mark in the NFL, behind only the Patriots’ Drake Maye (75.2), the Lions’ Jared Goff (74.9) and the Colts’ Daniel Jones (71.2) among quarterbacks with 100 attempts.

Yards

Rodgers: 10,483

Love: 9,536

Including his passing yards from backup duty, Love has thrown for 9,952 yards in his career, making him perhaps a few passes away from hitting 10,000 for his career. He’s 1,583 yards away from moving into fifth place on the franchise list.

Touchdowns

Rodgers: 70 (5.2 percent)

Love: 71 (5.7 percent)

Love threw three touchdown passes to move ahead of Rodgers at this stage of their careers. He is tied with Carson Palmer for 14th all-time in touchdown passes through 40 starts.

Interceptions

Rodgers: 29 (2.2 percent)

Love: 25 (2.0 percent)

No quarterback has avoided interceptions better in NFL history than Rodgers. It didn’t start that way, though. As a third-year starter in 2010, Rodgers threw 11 interceptions. With two in seven games this year, Love is on pace for about five.

Touchdown-to-Interception Ratio

Rodgers: 2.41

Love: 2.84

Love has been sensational this season with 13 touchdowns and two interceptions giving him a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 6.5.

Yards Per Attempt

Rodgers: 7.8

Love: 7.6

This season, Love ranks fourth with 8.4 yards per attempt. He hit a season-high 9.73 yards per attempt against the Steelers, though a lot of that was after the catch.

Passer Rating

Rodgers: 95.9

Love: 98.4

Rodgers spent the bulk of his career ranked No. 1 all-time in passer rating. At the same stage of their careers, Love’s passer rating is significantly higher, though passer rating has continually crept up over the years so it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

However, for what it’s worth, Love has the eighth-best passer rating at this stage of his career. The seven quarterbacks ahead of him include Patrick Mahomes (first, 110.5), Kurt Warner (second, 102.8), Lamar Jackson (fourth, 101.1), Joe Burrow (fifth, 101.0) and Russell Wilson (sixth, 98.9).

Record

Rodgers: 22-18 (.550)

Love: 23-16-1 (.588)

It takes all 11, though, as even coach Matt LaFleur agreed this week, a good quarterback can make up for shortcomings elsewhere. With a 5-1-1 record this season, the Packers remain the No. 1 team in the NFC.

The Packers were 4-3 at this stage of Rodgers’ third season; they went on to win the Super Bowl.

Jordan Love Dominates Steelers

Love was superb in stealing the show from Rodgers, who fell short of his quest of becoming the fifth quarterback to beat all 32 teams.

This was Love’s seventh start of the season. Five times, he’s gone over a 100 rating, with his 134.2 at Pittsburgh being his best of the season. Love’s 360 passing yards marked only his fifth 300-yard game of his career and the second-best overall, behind only the 389 yards from last year’s home loss to the Vikings.

“Man, I was just playing,” Love said after throwing for 214 yards in the second half. “I think you get in that as a player, where you just start flowing and playing well, and everybody around me just was making plays as well and executing at a high level. Obviously, we knew what we needed to change at halftime, and I’m just glad we were able to go out there and do that and start making some big-time plays.”

In 2008, Rodgers lost both matchups against Brett Favre and the Vikings. Love got the best of his mentor in what might be their one and only matchup.

It was a statement performance considering the microscope.

“There’s that added level of pressure,” Love said. “I knew coming into this week that this was going to be a very hyped-up game and very talked-about game for A-Rod coming back and playing against the Packers for the first time and, obviously, us going up against each other. So, you know that.

“Like I said at the beginning of week, my mindset was just trying to come out here and focus on getting that win, trying to block all that extra stuff out and just be the player I need to be, and focus on what their defense does, and find ways to take advantage of that and coming out here and getting this win.”