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 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)