Late last week, after news broke that the Pittsburgh Steelers were signing Aaron Rodgers, his former Green Bay Packers protege was understandably excited when asked about the opportunity to face the wily veteran as an opponent for the first time.
The Packers will face the Steelers in Pittsburgh during a primetime Sunday night matchup in Week 8 on Oct. 26 this fall.
“It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be awesome. I’m excited for it,” Jordan Love told Channel3000’s Jason Wilde. “I can’t wait to be on different sides, meeting up, and I know we’ll talk pregame, things like that. And hopefully we can exchange jerseys after.”
Since Love, the former Utah State star, took over as Green Bay’s starting quarterback for Rodgers after the 2022 season, the two signal callers have never faced each other.
Considering the rich history of the Packers organization with successfully developing long-term starting quarterbacks, it’s a bit appropriate that Love will face Rodgers for the first time — barring any injuries, of course — in the 26-year-old Love’s third year as Green Bay’s starting quarterback.
Both Rodgers and his predecessor, Hall of Famer Brett Favre, led the Packers to a Super Bowl championship during their decade-plus time as Green Bay’s starter.
Favre won a Super Bowl title with the Packers in his fifth season as their starter, in 1996, and took them back to the title game the next season.
Rodgers led Green Bay to a Super Bowl championship in his third year as the Packers’ starter in 2010.
Since 2001, the Packers have only missed the playoffs six times, and for Love and Co., the expectation is to be back in the postseason again.
Green Bay will conclude its offseason workout program this week with mandatory minicamp, which runs Tuesday through Thursday.
That ticks the calendar ever closer to the start of the next season.
Will Love elevate his game and take Green Bay to the next level — i.e., a deep playoff run?
In each of his first two seasons as the team’s starting quarterback, the Packers reached the playoffs.
Two years ago, Green Bay went 9-8 in the regular season, won six of its final eight games to make the postseason and beat Dallas in the wild card round before losing a seven-point third-quarter lead in a three-point loss to San Francisco in the divisional round.
Last season, the Packers improved their regular-season record, going 11-6 even while Love missed two full games — and parts of two others — due to injury, though they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles in the wild card round. In that game, Love threw three interceptions.
Green Bay is projected to be a playoff contender again, as the Packers show up in the top 10 of a variety of NFL power rankings.
One of the reasons for optimism is that the Packers have used this offseason to bolster their receiving group, and that included adding a wide receiver in the first round of the 2025 NFL draft.
Texas’ Matthew Golden, taken 23rd overall, was the first first-round wide receiver taken by Green Bay since 2002.
Then in the third round, the Packers added another wideout, selecting TCU’s Savion Williams at No. 87.
That should help Green Bay deal with not having wide receiver Christian Watson until likely November, as he misses time with a torn ACL.
“Now the pressure shifts back to Jordan Love and whether he can reach the mountaintop, or even get past the first few markers,” NFL.com’s Eric Edholm wrote in putting the Packers at No. 9 in his post-draft NFL power rankings.
Over the past two seasons, Love threw for 7,548 yards, 57 touchdowns and 22 interceptions.
After a recent OTA session, though, Love pushed back against a narrative that he might have taken a step back in his second year as a starter.
“I mean, what is a step back is what I’d ask?” per The Athletic’s Matt Schneidman. “You know what I mean? Everybody has different opinions, things like that. You gotta block that stuff out. It’s all about the goals of the team at the end of the day. I’d say we won more games than we did the year before. That’s why I ask people, what is a step back?”
While some of Love’s numbers did slide a bit from his first season starting to his second, it’s far from problematic.
He threw for 4,159 yards, 32 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 17 games in 2023, while throwing for 3,389 yards, 25 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 15 games last season. His completion percentage took a slight dip as well, from 64.2% to 63.1%.
Love’s QB rating, though, went from from 62.1 in 2023 to 69.3 last season, and so did his efficiency rating, rising from 96.1 to 96.7.
Also, the Packers won two more games.
“Like I said, everybody has opinions, things like that. Try to block that out and focus on doing me and being the best player I can be, like I’ve talked about, and go forward,” Love said. “But at the end of the day, personal stats, things like that, that’s all in the back. You gotta focus on the goals of the team, first and foremost.”
His coach, too, refuted this line of thinking.
Packers coach Matt LeFleur noted Love’s missed time due to injury and 29 dropped passes as issues the team dealt with last year.
“I think there’s like a narrative out there for whatever reason that he wasn’t as productive as the year before,” LaFleur said, per The Athletic. “Well, he missed significant time. He missed the better of three games. Really, it was Indy. It was Tennessee. He went out in Jacksonville and then he went out in Chicago. So, you know, three games is a significant amount of time and you’re not going to produce as much from a numbers perspective … and also, let’s be honest — we’ve talked about this — we did have a lot of drops last year.
“So there’s other circumstances that play into it. I think all in all, everybody’s going to be better, though.”
Can Love and the Packers push their trajectory upward and make a deeper playoff run?
Going into the season, Green Bay does have the expectations that it again will be postseason-bound — and even though it’s unfair to compare the career arc of Rodgers and Love, because of different circumstances, the hopes are high in Green Bay yet again.
Love, too, has his sights set high.
“You talk about Super Bowl, that’s the goal for us,” Love told reporters May 28 after OTA practice, according to The Athletic. “We talked about that last year, and that’s the same message this year. We’re trying to win a Super Bowl. I’m definitely trying to be that guy to be able to take this team and lead them to that.
“When you talk about Aaron and what he did in his third year, I never try to compare because that’s so hard to do. There’s so many different situations that go on, but at the end of the day, I’ve been here — going on Year 6, going on my third year playing. Everything is right there in front of us and for this team. It’s just about going out there, executing, but the goal is a Super Bowl. That’s the mindset we have, and we’re going to put in the work to be able to hopefully get there.”
