Ranking Every Player on Packers’ Roster: Jordan Love a Complicated No. 1

The Green Bay Packers will take a 90-player roster to the field for their first practice of training camp on July 23.

In a Packers On SI tradition, we ranked every player on the roster. This wasn’t just a list of the best players. Rather, we took talent, contract, draft history, importance of the position and depth at the position into consideration.

Jordan Love, for obvious reasons, is No. 1. More than the ranking, we hope you learned something about every player who will compete at training camp.

No. 1: QB Jordan Love

There’s a reason why quarterbacks get the big bucks. With a good quarterback, a team has a chance to win almost every week. With a great quarterback, a team has a chance to win the Super Bowl every year.

Is Jordan Love a good quarterback? A great one?

Who knows.

Well, coach Matt LaFleur said he knows.

“I feel pretty confident that we know what we have in Jordan, and we got a lot of confidence in him,” he said at the end of minicamp.

In 2023, Love’s debut season as Green Bay’s starting quarterback, 29 quarterbacks threw at least 275 passes. Love finished:

– 10th with a 96.1 passer rating.

– 18th with a 64.2 completion percentage.

– 12th with 7.2 yards per attempt.

– 5th with a 5.5 touchdown percentage and 14th with a 1.9 interception percentage.

In 2024, expectations were sky high after Love’s sizzling second half to 2023. Instead, of 32 quarterbacks to throw at least 275 passes, Love ranked:

– 12th with a 96.7 passer rating.

– 26th with a 63.1 completion percentage.

– 5th with 8.0 yards per attempt.

– 6th with a 5.9 touchdown percentage and 23rd with a 2.6 interception percentage.

As it turns out, there was no Year 2 jump for the player whose $55.0 million average salary ranks second among quarterbacks. His passer rating was about the same. His yards per attempt rose significantly, which was encouraging. His completion percentage was down and his interception percentage was up, which should lead to some skepticism that he is the right man for the job.

Of course, numbers are numbers and what they say in a vacuum is different from what they say in full context. You know the context, with Love’s Week 1 knee injury and midseason groin injury not only hobbling him on Sundays but limiting him during the practice week.

“There might be some things here and there that might’ve been affected by the injury, but I’m never going to put anything on an injury,” Love said during OTAs. “I’m going out there, if I’m healthy enough to go, I’m going to try to give it my best and be the best player I can be out there.”

Love had 10 games with a 100 passer rating in 2023, including seven of the final eight games to help Green Bay surge into the playoffs. He hit that mark in only six games last season. His worst four games in terms of yards per attempt came during the final three games of the regular season and the playoff loss.

“I think there’s like a narrative out there, for whatever reason, that he wasn’t as productive as the year before,” LaFleur said. “Well, he missed significant time. He missed the better of three games. Really, it was Indy, it was Tennessee, he went out in Jacksonville and then he went out in Chicago. So, three games is a significant amount of time, and you’re not going to produce as much from a numbers perspective.

“And also, let’s be honest, we did have a lot of drops last year, so there’s other circumstances that play into it. I think all in all, everybody’s going to be better, though.”

It’s true the missed time impacts the bottom-line numbers of completions, yards and touchdowns. It doesn’t account for Love throwing 11 interceptions in 2023 and matching it in 2024, even though he attempted 154 fewer passes.

The drops impacted the completion percentage, though not quite as much as you might think. If no quarterback in the NFL was impacted by a dropped pass, Love’s completion percentage would have gone from 26th to 19th – still below average.

Love does play a bit more of a high-risk, high-reward game than most quarterbacks. With Love’s big arm and LaFleur’s aggressive approach, Love ranked fourth in average distance of throw – 1.1 yards deeper than the league median – and would have led the NFL in deep passes had he not missed so much playing time. Obviously, it’s easier to complete a 2-yard pass than a 22-yard pass, so Love might never be a top-five quarterback in completion percentage.

What Love must do is cut back on the turnovers. Even the NFL’s all-time interception thrower, Brett Favre, had the fourth-lowest interception percentage when the Packers won the Super Bowl in 1996.

The young-quarterback excuse doesn’t hold any water. He’s entering Year 6 in the NFL and Year 3 as a starter. Washington’s Jayden Daniels as a rookie had a 100.1 passer rating and led his team to the NFC Championship Game.

Outgoing Packers President Mark Murphy called Aaron Rodgers a “complicated fella.” Love’s not a complicated fella but he is a complicated quarterback to analyze.

This, however, is not complicated at all: For Love to match Favre and Rodgers and win a Super Bowl as a sixth-year pro and third-year starter, he’s going to have to stay healthy and play much closer to the quarterback who took the NFL by storm in 2023 than the one who scuffled down the stretch in 2024.

“I’m confident and just keep pushing the envelope with everything we do, keep pushing myself, keep pushing the guys, and just try and be as consistent as possible every day,” Love said at the end of minicamp. “We’ll take our time and get back together for training camp. But we’re ready to go. Ready for the season.”