People forget Rodgers was coming off an NFC Championship game were he was absolutely awful in the first half. By the end of the game his stats look OK but it was garbage time. That game was over before half time and Rodgers looked old and broken down.

After that game I told my step father I didn’t believe Rodger was ever going to hold up a whole season and playoffs. So far he hasn’t. The NFL added a 17th regular season game. Rodgers lasted single digit plays this year for the Jets. Time is a bitch. Rodgers is old. I appreciate ALL of the good things he did here, but drafting a QB was the correct move.

The biggest “mistake” about the Jordan Love pick was that Aaron Rodgers didn’t know about it. If Gute had the time to sit down with Rodgers and go over why they were taking a shot to have his successor developed and ready to take over in 3-4 years, it might have played out better for everyone. From my understanding though, it wasn’t necessarily the plan going in to the draft. Justin Jefferson was taken 22nd, and Brandon Aiyuk 25th. Packers liked Jordan Love more than Tee Higgins/Michael Pittman Jr. so they traded up 4 picks to take Love at 26. There probably wasn’t time to call Rodgers and say “the plan has changed, we couldn’t get one of our favorite WRs, so we’re shooting our shot to get a 1st round QB for the future” “You’re still our guy for the next 3-4 years and maybe beyond, but Jordan Love could be our 3rd straight HOF QB and we didn’t want to miss out.”

Things were also up in the air because of Covid, so there was no guarantee that the 2020 season was even going to happen. During that season Rodgers plays lights out, wins MVP and we are favored to win the NFC Championship game. Then Bahktiari tears his ACL in practice before the game. That game was 10-14 Bucs when Scotty Miller beat King deep on the last play of the first half to make it 10-21. We start the second half with a lost fumble from Aaron Jones, they quickly turn into a TD so it’s 10-28 before we know it. Still, had a chance with 2 minutes left in the game, in the red zone, down by 8.

So all-in-all, the front office assessment that we had a Super Bowl caliber roster already, and could use the 1st round pick to build for the future, wasn’t far off. It just looks worse in hind-sight because it soured Rodgers on the front office from that point on, and because of Bahktiari’s injury, we fell just short of the super bowl that year (and the next year as it turns out, Bahktiari out again and we lose the NFCC on a blocked punt of all things)

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?

Small market in the NFL isn’t really a big deal, there’s a salary cap so every team has the same to spend.

The pick and you thoughts on it basically come down to whether you prefer being good for a long time and hoping to occasionally hit big, or going all in to maximize your chances of winning in one or 2 specific seasons. Both strategies work and can win you a Superbowl. It really just comes down to organizational philosophy. Buccaneers sold out and it worked, Rams, Broncos with Manning, Chiefs built their team the long way so did us and the Patriots.

I am one of the ones who hated the pick at the time and think we should have tried more to win when the window was there, we didn’t, I moved on. Now I’m looking optimistically and think we are 3-5 years away from the next window opening up for us. Life of a fan.