Fans seem a little disappointed on the whole with the Jordan Love pick, but there’s a lot of ways of looking at it.
First, we could just hope for the best and dream of him being our third straight Super Bowl winning, MVP quarterback in a row.
People seem to struggle with optimism, though, so let’s look at it from another perspective.
This pick shows that the team is more worried about being competitive for a title in the long-term than going all in for a big one year push with an aging QB (which history shows rarely works). Whether you the pick or not, you have to respect the front office for sticking to their board and doing what they think is right even when it’s unpopular. Maybe that will pay dividends.
Ok, maybe a wait and see approach is too hard, too – let’s get right to the worst case scenario. Let’s say Jordan Love is a complete bust and the pick is totally wasted.
As we’ve said before, a draft isn’t lost just because the 1st round pick doesn’t work out. In addition to the article we wrote about it, we can look at Packers history and see that a bust pick like Justin Harrell didn’t stop the Packers from winning the Super Bowl.
But that’s different, right? Love is a quarterback and we should be trying to win with our old quarterback now, right?
Well, lets look back at a similar team in a similar situation.
In 1992, the Denver Broncos had an aging John Elway and, instead of giving him a weapon or shoring up the defense, the took quarterback Tommy Maddox in the 1st round.
Maddox was a total and complete bust.
And you know what the Broncos did?
They went on to win back to back Super Bowls under John Elway.
This proves that, even if Jordan Love does absolutely nothing, the Packers haven’t shut their Super Bowl window and they haven’t precluded themselves from future success.
Let’s look at a team that did this more recently. The Patriots are the gold standard of winning for this millennium and they took Jimmy Garoppolo, who did nothing for them and still won multiple Super Bowls. Sure, Garoppolo was only a 2nd rounder, but do you remember who they took in the 1st round? Dominique Easley, who only started 3 games before being cut after 2 seasons.
They busted their 1st pick and used their 2nd on a QB who never became the starter – then they went on to win 3 Super Bowls in 5 years.
One stud 1st round pick isn’t going to win a team a Super Bowl and one bust in the 1st round isn’t going keep a team out of the Super Bowl.
Not all draft picks work out, but grabbing a guy who you think can be the quarterback of the future is rarely a bad strategy in the draft.
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Well this optimistic take may have just gotten shot into the sun after this day two of the draft
I’m optimistic on what Jordan Love could become with time to learn the system and get eased into the job, but I’m really scratching my head over the Day 2 picks.