Ah yes, the first Sunday after the Super Bowl. For 23 weeks straight, we’ve punched in at the content factory like clockwork for a few hours of mindless entertainment each weekend – whether we were watching actually good sports, celebrating our Italian (American) heritage, or enjoying the free word association beat-style poetry of Tony Romo.
But today, after finishing up our trips to the farmer’s market and walking our dogs, there is a Scott Hanson shaped hole in the middle of our afternoon. At least four long hours to fill, and the knowledge that there will be many more such Sundays to slog through in the months to come. (For The Love does not acknowledge the existence of the newly formed UFL).
This weekend, the other shoe finally drops. We’ve felt it coming for some time now. The first day back to work after Christmas and New Years is a shock to the system, yes, but at least playoff football is around the corner – hell, that is right in the middle of Bowl Season if you are into that kind of thing.
And sure, we all get that unmistakable chill down our spine when we accidentally flip on the Pro Bowl in the no man’s land between the conference championships and the big game (I refuse to believe that this snapping contest was viewed 880,000 discrete times). But even then, once you quickly change the channel, you can rest easy knowing that there is one more game left, one more opportunity to leave it all out on the couch, one last football Sunday.
But, here we are. The other side of the looking glass. And yet, even though my team has been hitting the links for almost a full month now, I’m not used to the relative hush over Green Bay this February. And yes, I know it is 2024. I know that the Packers haven’t won a Super Bowl since 2010 (remember Taio Cruz???), but even still, for more than half a decade the Green Bay off-seasons have been anything but smooth sailing.
I mean sure, Joe Barry just got canned, but that was largely to be expected when your defensive squad lets Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, and a man simply known as Tommy Cutlets [citation needed] put up career numbers against you.
But other than the relieved sighs of the Packer faithful at the sacking of yet another DC dud, the mood heading into the off-season is one that may be unfamiliar to cheese-head nation, at least in recent years. And it has to do with the two signal-callers who will likely be linked forever in history —Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love.
I’m going to level with you: this is hard. As a Packers fan of a certain vintage, virtually my entire cognizant life has had Rodgers under center in Green Bay. After 18 seasons, there were certainly a lot of highs, some lows [citation needed], and perhaps a few too many State Farm ads. Rodgers carried the team after the Favre years for more than a decade and a half, putting up God-tier numbers and even bringing a title back to TitleTown. And yet…
Wait, wait, wait – this is a blog about Jordan Love. I don’t want to do the whole rehash of the Rodgers saga. That’s exactly what I don’t want to do! It’s all been said before. The whole arc has been dissected and reexamined from every angle. The chip-on-his-shoulder Cal QB gets snubbed in the draft only to languish behind one of the NFL’s top flight, workhorse play callers. Hones his craft under the master, yadda yadda yadda, proves he’s the real deal, etc. etc., keeps the Packers at the top of the league for over a decade. But still, despite the success, the signs were always there. The weird family situation, the first (harmless) dabbling in conspiracy theories, the smug too-clever-by-half, Jeopardy-winner persona – these were all well and good.
But in the last five years with Green Bay things started to take a nosedive. First there was the McCarthy debacle, with poor performance in the 2018-19 season spilling into an off-season in which Rodgers effectively gets the Pack to axe their head coach for him. Then there is the LaFleur controversy, where communication between the new coach and the star QB are scrutinized like the Enigma Code – only for Rodgers to go off and carry the Pack to a 13-3 record. But, even though the play on the field remained strong, the off-season shenanigans rapidly deteriorated. In successive seasons, we had the drama around drafting Love (and Rodgers subsequent tequila binge), two years of retirement-baiting, and, of course, the darkness retreat.
In fact, it was just around this time last year that Packer nation were all frantically googling about darkness retreats (dark rooms have appeared in many different forms — from the pyramids for the ancient Egyptians, to the catacombs for the ancient Romans and the caves for the Kogi Mamos in Colombia). And yet, Packers fans were always in the dark, two steps behind the egomaniacal machinations of a really great football player who saw himself as a free-thinking, renegade puppet master, empowered to troll the liberal media the way he used to troll NFC north secondaries. The most annoying guy in your entry-level philosophy class had a franchise by the short and curlies. And during the off-season, with no elite-level play redeeming him on a weekly basis on-field, Rodgers became a serious headache.
It looks like this trend has only gotten worse. Yes, the “immunized” debacle was bad, but does it rise to the level of insinuating that a late night host took a trip to Epstein Island? You, humble reader, can decide.
But again, this is not a Rodgers blog. All of this is to say, the Packers are in a very different position now. We are not in thrall to a drumbeat of quixotic sound bites from our signal caller for the foreseeable future. Instead, we have Jordan Love.
Love offers the Packers something new, obviously. On field, the comparisons between Love and Rodgers poured in this season. And as a FTL blogger, I am contractually obligated to include some actual stats in this thing, so let us consider the two QBs first years as starters:
From everything from sheer numbers to throwing platform, Love has matched up nicely with Rodgers this season. But again, this season, Packers fans are experiencing something new – a sense of hope. Not to say that the Packers were hopeless under Rodgers. Expectations with 12 under center were high. And that may just be the crux of the issue. Expectations demand meeting.
As a serious contender in the GOAT conversation, Rodgers single Lombardi is, in some ways, embarrassing. I mean, even Eli has two rings, and look at this guy! For Rodgers, the last few years on the Packers, as things deteriorated off-field, are instructive. Losing in the NFC championship in 2019 was upsetting of course, but it was a sign of big things to come under LaFleur. Losing in 2020 was a troubling trend. Losing in the Divisional round in 2021 in a backbreaking loss to an underdog – the Packers’ perennial boogeyman the 49ers – was simply unacceptable. Season after season of quality performances falling short of a Super Bowl imbues a fanbase with a sense of dread. Yes, the regular season wins pile up, but, what if we fall apart in January again this year? Is this all for nothing? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Dan Marino, pray for us!
So, back to Love. As this season started—and certainly as it progressed—expectations were mixed. Was he the next Rodgers? Was he a bust? I personally hoped to simply snatch a winning record and to have him show me something – signs that he could be, might be, an NFL-level signal caller.
Love delivered. Smashing expectations, he punched the Packers’ ticket to the playoffs and even defenestrated Dallas on public television for the country’s enjoyment. And sure, he couldn’t make it happen in the Divisional Round against (checks notes) the god-damn Niners, but he showed all the makings of a good QB (all Packers QBs get one heart wrenching playoff interception every five years – sorry, I don’t make the rules).
Where does this leave us? Well, it does seem pretty quiet this off-season in Green Bay. A few roster and front office moves, but largely “no distractions” so far, as one former Jeopardy host would say. Stepping into the 2024/25 season, the Packers are sitting 8th in the current odds for Super Bowl winners. The Packers still have the youngest team in the league, and are feeling like they got the better end of the deal that slotted Jordan Love into the starting QB role.
We do not know what the future holds. If I did, I would be down at the track. But with Love, the possibilities have opened up. With Rodgers, every season was the ticking of a clock on the wall—another season where the potential of our great QB is wasted. Wasted on a bad defense, poor special teams, injuries, a weak line, or a fundamental misunderstanding of vaccine science.
But with Love, the potential is endless. Young QB, young coach, young team. Look, expectations can change quickly though. The timeline for QBs to make things happen in this league shrinks by the day. It took Favre four years to win a title for the Packers, Rodgers only three. Could Love continue the trend? Who knows – there is a lot of time left this off-season. But while things are quiet in Green Bay, I really do think they’re strong enough. Take it away Cher.
For The Love 