Jordan Love vs. Aaron Rodgers Odds Send Ridiculous Message About 2024 Season
When a franchise has as few starting quarterbacks as the Green Bay Packers, they're never going to escape comparison to each other. Aaron Rodgers never really stopped getting Brett Favre comparisons (a late-career stint with the New York Jets doesn't help, either), and Jordan Love will long be measured against Rodgers.
That sets a high bar for Love, but the high bar is set by what Rodgers did in his prime. No Packers fans are worried about Love not being a better option than Rodgers in 2024. And yet the betting markets on DraftKings Sportsbook make a ridiculous comparison between Love and Rodgers this year.
Jordan Love vs. Aaron Rodgers: Passing Yards Odds
Regular season passing yards head-to-head:
- Jordan Love (-135)
- Aaron Rodgers (+105)
If you're not familiar with betting odds, this is a market that lets you bet on who will throw for more passing yards in the upcoming regular season. Love is the favorite (with "minus" odds), while Rodgers is the underdog (with "plus" odds). That's no surprise, but what is surprising is how close this matchup is projected to be.
If we remove the cut the sportsbook takes, this market implies that Jordan Love only has a 54.1% chance to throw for more yards than Rodgers this season.
This after Love's 2023 breakout season, which saw him throw for 4,159 yards. He obviously threw for more yards than Rodgers in 2023, since Rodgers only attempted one pass before getting injured. But even if we look further back, the matchup should not be this close.
Rodgers hasn't thrown for more than 4,159 yards since 2020. That's two seasons (three with the injury year) of throwing for fewer yards than Love did. And even if we give Rodgers credit for longevity, what are the odds a 41-year-old Rodgers coming off a serious injury is still as good as he was in 2020? This is also not even considering Love's development since last year, now that he has a full year as an NFL starter under his belt.
And it's not like we can ignore the injury risk here. Rodgers seemed to heal well from his injury, but a 41-year-old coming off a season-ender feels a lot more likely to miss time than a 25-year-old in his prime. So even if we think the per-game yardage totals will be close, injury potential pushes things in Love's favor.
The Jets have tried to upgrade their offensive line, but this is still a team that had the No. 30 pass-blocking unit in the NFL in 2023, per PFF. The Packers, on the other hand, ranked No. 10. Tyron Smith, who the Jets are trusting to enhance the pass protection, has not been healthy enough to play more than 13 games in a season since 2015. He's averaged just 7.5 games per season over the last four years.
It's hard to come up with a serious argument for this market being so close beyond a simple "Aaron Rodgers is one of the all-time greats." And sure, he has earned the benefit of the doubt from a long, incredible NFL career. And this isn't to say that we should expect a total dud from him in 2024. But Love is the next big thing, and there's way too much working against Rodgers here to justify this matchup being so close.
Hopefully, by the end of the season, we'll start the conversation about how Love stacks up against a prime Aaron Rodgers instead.
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Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.