On Friday night, Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love reportedly signed a four-year, $220 million contract, making him the highest-paid quarterback in NFL history.
To outsiders, this was based on “one good season” by Love as the starter.
In reality, it’s based on the four years Love has been with the organization since general manager Brian Gutekunst drafted Love with the No. 26 pick in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft. The Packers already knew Love was a great player and fit to lead their franchise. All Green Bay needed was confirmation this past season — and they got it.
Love, with the youngest team in the league around him, threw for 4,159 yards and 32 touchdowns in his first year as a starter. He threw just 11 interceptions, 10 of which came within the first 10 games of the season.
What’s more, every major passing metric, including advanced, have Love in the top 10 among qualified quarterbacks. That includes Next Gen Stats’ passing score, which has Love 10th at 96.1. It also includes things like total EPA, or expected points added, in which Love ranks sixth.
Love also beat the Chicago Bears both times this season.
He and the Packers grew up before our eyes this season. After the team suffered four-straight losses between weeks 5-8, Love helped his team pull out of their slump, going on to win four of their next five games. In that time, you saw head coach Matt LaFleur start to open up the playbook more. You saw more creativity from Green Bay’s feisty young players. You saw Love read, react and make better decisions.
You saw the Packers pick up where Aaron Rodgers left off.
What seemed like an impossibility was now reality for Green Bay: they had struck gold for a third-straight time. They had their guy… again.
Why Jordan Love deserves a big contract with the Packers
Love rewarded the trust placed in him from Week 10 on. He threw just one interception in that span, while totaling 20 touchdowns both through the air and on the ground. Love’s back foot became his best friend as he consistently and almost eerily continued on the back-foot-fade tradition set by his predecessor, and quite frankly, his before that. There were plenty of throws in rhythm as Love showed his command of the offense.
There were also those that just seemed preordained as Love found an open man among a flurry of movement. Almost 50% of Love’s throws were wide open — a testament to the confounding scheme LaFleur has the capability to deploy and the sheer number of options Love had at his disposal, all young, all hungry, all bought in to their quarterback’s skills.
Love’s offensive corps will account for just around 10% of the Packers’ total cap space this year. They had made sure to sign defensive tackle Kenny Clark, who was projected to come with a $27.5 million cap charge this season, to an extension, bringing that hit down to a reported $11 million, according to Spotrac. Prior to Love’s deal, the Packers had almost $27 million in cap space to play with, the seventh-most in the league.
Love’s ‘hold in’ at training camp was decorated with smiles and jokes from both his head coach and general manager. There was never any real doubt this deal was getting done, and that Green Bay would do right by Love, who waited ever so patiently for this exact moment.
The Packers could have waited to pay Love. He had another year on a team-friendly extension he signed last offseason, betting on himself in the process. Love knew his capabilities. He knew he could show the Packers they were being passed off to good hands — that he wasn’t afraid of following a future Hall of Famer.
The Packers believed this, too. Call it optimism or willing it into existence, but all they needed was confirmation. They got it. And wasted no time locking it up for what looks like another couple of decades, if also for the fact that quarterback salaries aren’t getting any cheaper.
This is Love’s team. It’s been Love’s team since the moment he stepped foot on Soldier Field in Week 1 of the 2023 season and upheld the long-standing traditions of the Packers from the very beginning.
And it will be Love’s team for a very long time.
Carmen Vitali covers the NFC North for FOX Sports. Carmen had previous stops with The Draft Network and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. She spent six seasons with the Bucs, including 2020, which added the title of Super Bowl Champion (and boat-parade participant) to her résumé. You can follow Carmen on Twitter at @CarmieV.
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