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Jordan Love is now officially the future of the Green Bay Packers, as the team not only shipped out future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers in order to make way for Love to become the starting QB, but they also handed the 24-year-old a one-year contract extension.
It certainly wasn’t the simplest road to becoming the Packers’ starting signal-caller, as Jordan Love — similar to Rodgers himself, in fact — had to serve as a second-stringer for the first three seasons of his young career.
Last year, in particular, was the “hardest time” for Love, particularly after the franchise handed the then 38-year-old Rodgers a three-year, $150 million contract extension.
“I’ll admit: I think the hardest time was when he re-signed the contract last year,” Love said during a press conference this week. “It was like, ‘OK, well, where do we go from here? What do I do?’
“And I think I sat back, thought to myself and just came back with the approach, like, ‘Let’s just go ball out any opportunity I get. I’m going to get preseason and who knows what happens after that, so just grow and try and become the best version of myself. I can’t really control what happens after that, so let it play out.’”
Luckily for Love, despite the fact that Rodgers signed a three-year deal with the Packers last offseason, the four-time NFL MVP only lasted one more season in Green Bay before engineering a trade to the New York Jets back in April.
Despite the fact that Rodgers is coming off one of the worst seasons of his career — he threw more interceptions than he had in a decade and the Packers missed out on the playoffs — his trade to the New York Jets has made the team one of the most exciting in the league, as evidenced by the fact that their season debut will be on Monday Night Football against the Buffalo Bills.