They say it's the hardest position in sports and there's a reason for that.
Being an NFL quarterback is not for the faint of heart. Not only is there the pressure of a whole fanbase riding on your shoulders, but you have 11 elite athletes on the other side of the ball trying to make your life miserable.
Throw in the ever-sophisticated offensive playbooks of 2024 as well as the nonstop pressures of social media and a 24/7 NFL calendar and it's enough to make a young player's head spin.
And for Jordan Love, it did.
The Packers did Love a favor, though, and it was the same favor they did for the quarterback before him: Aaron Rodgers. They drafted Love in 2020 with the intention to let him sit and learn behind Rodgers, the future Hall of Famer. Years before, a different front office in Green Bay drafted Rodgers with the intention of him learning behind Hall of Famer Brett Favre.
It worked out for Rodgers, and now with a $220 million contract extension and the keys to one of the most exciting offenses in the NFL, we can say it has worked out for Love.
Watching Rodgers take his lumps in the NFL prepared Love to take his own.
"Being on the bench for those three years, seeing a season, seeing how Aaron went about it, that’s what got me to understand that stuff’s not going to be perfect in the NFL,” Love recently told Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. “You watch one of the greatest quarterbacks ever do it and it’s hard for him. If it’s hard for him, you know it’s hard for everyone out there. It’s a team sport. It takes everybody out there on the field doing their job.”
That's a tremendous mindset and it helped Love push through a 2-5 start that saw him look average to below average at best. And it certainly helped him turn things around to end the season looking like one of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL.
Learning the ups and downs of the game from a four-time MVP was vital for Love, but now that he's the undisputed star in Green Bay rather than Rodgers, remembering his roots as a backup who very few believed in is helping him stay humble and hungry.
"I think all that goes back to remembering where you came from, remembering being the backup, being behind the guy that was in that position, seeing how he goes about his business,” Love told Sports Illustrated. “And just remembering my first year, when there were a lot of question marks, how this team had my back. Now we’re in a different spot. So don’t change up. Be a good teammate. Be all these things that I’ve been."
