The Green Bay Packers have until Tuesday to make a decision on Jordan Love’s contract option for the 2024 season.
Like other first-round picks in the 2020 NFL Draft, Love’s current contract calls for a team option for the 2024 campaign. If the Packers were to pick up said option, the inexperienced signal caller would earn $20.27 million fully guaranteed in 2024.
Love, 24, has thrown all of 83 regular-season passes since the Packers made him a first-round pick out of Utah State back in 2020. He’s now going to take over for the recently traded Aaron Rodgers as QB in Green Bay.
With Love’s contract decision looming, Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst had a rather interesting take.
“It’s a lot of money for a guy who hasn’t played, but at the same time, we’re moving forward with him,” Gutekunst on Jordan Love contract situation following the 2023 NFL Draft.
Green Bay has had all of two regular starting quarterbacks since the team traded for Pro Football Hall of Famer Brett Favre back in 1992.
Rodgers took over for him as the Packers’ starter back in 2008 and spent 18 largely successful seasons in Green Bay before being dealt to the New York Jets last week. The hope for Gutekunst and Co. is that Love can pick up the baton and run with it.
The Packers’ belief in Love dates back to a disappointing 2022 season for the team as a whole.
“At one point late last year, Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst told an NFL colleague he was convinced it was time the organization move on from quarterback Aaron Rodgers and see what Jordan Love had in him,” Tom Silverstein on Green Bay Packers evaluations of their quarterbacks.
Related: Highest-paid NFL QBs of 2023
Jordan Love contract decision is not an easy one for the Packers
Paying out $20 million guaranteed to a quarterback with no real experience in 2024 is not an ideal scenario.
However, the other option here would be to let Love play out the 2023 season and potentially place the franchise tag in the young quarterback next March. That would actually be a more expensive proposition with said tag for quarterbacks slated to be north of $32 million.
This leads us to believe that Green Bay will pick up the 2024 option on Love’s contract with the expectation that he performs extremely well as a full-time starter for the first time in his career. If this were to happen, Green Bay would then engage in extension negotiations with Love after the 2023 season.
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