Packers desperately need more weapons for Jordan Love
It’s not official yet, but all signs continue to point toward Jordan Love being the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers in Week 1 of the 2023 NFL season. And they’re setting him up for failure.
Green Bay lacks offensive weapons at wide receiver and tight end to make the transition easy for the fourth-year quarterback, and don’t have the resources to adequately address the needs this offseason.
Before we dive into what Green Bay doesn’t have, let’s rewind the clock to check what they did have when Aaron Rodgers took over as the starter in his fourth year. Green Bay only went 6-10 in his first season, but Rodgers threw for 4038 yards, 26 touchdowns and 13 interceptions while completing 63.6 percent of his passes.
Similar to this year, the Packers had a good running game to rely on in Ryan Grant. Grant rushed for 1203 yards to provide the offense with balance. However, the Packers had two established and 1,000-yard receivers in Greg Jennings and Donald Driver, as well as youngsters Jordy Nelson and James Jones. That group of receivers gave Rodgers room for error and allowed them to do some of the heavy lifting.
The Green Bay Packers desperately need to add more offensive firepower to surround Jordan Love in his first year as the starter.
The Packers have the young receivers part down, with Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs the top two receivers on the depth chart. However, both were injury prone in their first and only NFL season in 2022 and are far from proven, even if the sky is their limit.
They lack any sort of proven receiver for Love. Nobody at the tight end position is trustworthy in the passing game. Besides Watson and Doubs, there are three guys named Bo Melton, Samori Toure, and Jeff Cotton. Toure is the only other receiver with an NFL reception under his belt.
AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones will be relied upon a ton in both the running and passing games. They’re the only proven weapons entering the 2023 season and can help take some of the pressure off Love. It won’t be enough.
Green Bay hopes to pick up an additional draft pick in the first or second round this year through a Rodgers trade and could likely use a couple of top picks on offensive weapons. It won’t be enough.
There are a couple of wide receivers left in free agency–Odell Beckham Jr., D.J. Chark, Jarvis Landry and Julio Jones are the top ones–but Green Bay doesn’t have any money to acquire them even if they wanted to.
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Green Bay is taking a huge risk relying on a bunch of second-year and rookie players to have an immediate impact with a quarterback who is entering his first season as the full-time starter. They must find a way to change that and give him a reliable target. Or three.