Regardless of QB, Packers should plan to compete in 2023
By Paul Bretl
Regardless of who the Green Bay Packers quarterback is in 2023, how Brian Gutekunst goes about this offseason shouldn’t drastically change. Obviously, if Aaron Rodgers is back, the Packers will do their best to compete, and they should have that same mentality if Jordan Love is under center as well.
Just because Love may be the starting quarterback in 2023 doesn’t mean he will be the answer long-term. However, the Packers need to give him every opportunity to prove that he can be the guy in order to have the best evaluation of him.
Given Green Bay’s salary cap situation, there will have to be some reloading that takes place, which may include having to replace pending free agents like Allen Lazard, Robert Tonyan, and Adrian Amos, among others. But what shouldn’t be taking place is a rebuild or even a reset.
This means Gutekunst needs to do what he can to hang on to Aaron Jones, even though cutting him comes with $10 million in cap savings. Although that’s a large amount, especially for a team $16 million over the salary cap currently, this was also an offense lacking consistent playmaking in 2022, and Jones was the one constant in that regard. It also should mean keeping David Bakhtiari, who still played at a high level when available last season. As I wrote recently, there aren’t enough cap savings that come with cutting him to justify the move.
So if these two players, along with Preston Smith, De’Vondre Campbell, and Rasul Douglas, are going to be back instead of trying to capitalize on some salary cap savings, the Packers are going to have to restructure their way to salary cap solvency. This will push current cap charges into future years, inflating future salary cap deficits, but if Green Bay wants the best opportunity to see what Love can do, this will be a must–and, in my opinion, worth it if it means finding out the answer to this question, regardless of whether the result is positive or negative.
Knowing if Love can or cannot lead this team into future seasons will have a major impact on how the Packers attack the 2024 offseason. It could mean signing Love to an extension. Or, on the flip side, they could be looking to draft their future starting quarterback. The worst place that the Packers could find themselves a year from now is not completely sure of Love’s abilities. So instead, they should do what they can now to give themselves the best opportunity to learn what he is capable of.
While we always have to be mindful of coach and GM-speak, based on Gutekunst’s and Matt LaFleur’s comments after the season had ended, the Packers’ plan is to reload for the 2023 season. For one, hitting the reset button isn’t the Packer way, and two, one would think that of all people, Gutey and LaFleur want Love to have every possible opportunity to succeed.
For certain, the Packers, who see Love in practice and in the film room every day, have a much more clear idea than we do on the outside on whether he can be a starter long-term. Gutekunst even said mid-season that they had already seen enough when it came to making a decision on his fifth-year option this Spring. However, the true litmus test will come when Love is an every day starter, and Gutey acknowledged this as well.
Without question, it was a small sample size, but Love looked like a much-improved quarterback against Philadelphia, with improved footwork, which led to more accuracy, along with him being decisive, and letting the ball rip. As we’ve seen over the last few seasons in San Francisco, the Kyle Shanahan offense — which LaFleur runs a version of — doesn’t require a Hall of Fame quarterback to be successful, but that quarterback does certainly need help around him. Hopefully, Love gets off to a fast start, but not putting the best possible team around Love is doing him a disservice.