Packers GM opens up about going from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love

Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst offered more insight into the franchise moving on from quarterback Aaron Rodgers to start 2020 first-round draft pick Jordan Love for the upcoming season. 

"There’s some things we believe in here — developing quarterbacks, and drafting quarterbacks to develop," Gutekunst recently told NBC Sports' Peter King. "We believe in allowing them to sit and learn a little bit before they have to play. It’s an organization thing. It’s the route. It’s trying to make the best decisions to win today but also understanding that there’s gonna be a tomorrow and not sacrificing that." 

Similar to how Rodgers spent his first three NFL seasons as a backup behind Hall of Famer Brett Favre, Love sat beneath Rodgers on the depth chart across the past three campaigns until everyone involved agreed it was time to go in different directions. Rodgers received his desired move to the New York Jets ahead of this year's draft, and Love later signed a one-year contract extension that theoretically could keep him with Green Bay through at least the 2024 season. 

Gutekunst admitted he doesn't know how he would've handled the Favre-Rodgers situation following the 2007 season that ended for the Packers with a loss to the New York Giants in the conference title game. Favre, of course, played for the Jets in 2008 and finished his career when he retired as a member of the Minnesota Vikings after the 2010 campaign. 

"Obviously I was a road scout at the time so I wasn’t here making those decisions," Gutekunst said about the Packers going from Favre to Rodgers roughly 15 years ago. "I always wondered: If we had a traditional owner, we would’ve been very close to Brett I’m sure, and what would we have done [in 2008]? But I do think this place, because of what we believe in and the stability of it, is a little bit different. This place, I think, is about what’s doing right for the team each and every day. Sometimes those are complicated decisions. But no one’s ever come to me and tried to make me compromise that."