I started watching football since the play offs last year,(I’m from Portugal)so I really was not here when the packers decided to draft jordan love instead of a guy to help us winning right away, but don’t you all agree that, as a small market that Green Bay is ,we need to stay competitive every year? Or at least try? I really can understand the pick back then because we knew Rodgers was not going to last forever so they were projecting the future instead of having to draft a guy now and possibly be a bad team in the next years. Thanks guys, go pack go
The pick came as a shock to everybody at the time, no doubt. But it’s not as if the Packers were picking top-ten. Were they one sure-fire late-first rookie away from a Super Bowl win? I reckon the front office figured they already had a Super Bowl contending team, and they were right. Hard to say one more rookie puzzle piece would have put them over the top. Not losing Bakhtiari in a freak injury would have been far likelier to put them over the top in the games that mattered, especially against that fierce TB defense, which would have probably swallowed up another competent rookie WR with ease.
Meanwhile, we have the benefit of retrospect in evaluating/criticizing the pick. The front office did not have that benefit. At the time, A-Rod had been showing real signs of slowing down. We all saw it. They evaluated Jordan Love as a very good QB who had slipped all the way down to the lower first. That evaluation will define this FO’s tenure for better or worse.
I think fans (and many analysts) are two-dimensional on how they view team-building, i.e. the “Super Bowl window” vs. “long-term building” dichotomy. Reality doesn’t break down so neatly. Love was there, and they had established a glowing evaluation of him through their own processes. So within the office, how do they NOT go for it?