Jordan Love received some valuable advice on how best to follow in the footsteps of Aaron Rodgers as the Green Bay Packers’ starting quarterback – from Rodgers himself.
Love said Rodgers hit him up Tuesday night and told him to be Jordan Love, not to try to be Aaron Rodgers.
“Aaron reached out to me last night and that’s exactly what he said,” Love said to reporters Wednesday. “He said just be yourself, have fun, enjoy it. It’s obviously my time now, and he just said, you know, be yourself. I mean, that’s all you can do."
Interestingly, Love has received similar advice from others around him.
“That’s kind of been the message from everybody, is be yourself,” Love said. “Don’t try to be anybody else. Don’t try to be Aaron. Things like that. Just be yourself, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
One way in which Love could be different than Rodgers initially is his preseason usage. Rodgers last appeared in a preseason game for the Packers in 2018, when he attempted four passes in the second of Green Bay’s four preseason games that year. (There were no preseason games in the COVID-affected 2020 season, but there were four in 2019 and three apiece the past two preseasons.)
The Packers are expected to veer from that strategy with Love given that he has one career start and 83 regular-season pass attempts in his three NFL seasons. Although the Packers are weighing the risk of playing Love too much in the preseason, they also know he needs the reps now that he has been anointed the team’s starter. They have three preseason games this year but also two sets of joint practices, with the Patriots and Bengals.
Rodgers was traded to the Jets in April in an exchange of draft picks. It remains to be seen how much New York plays Rodgers this preseason given his newness to the team, even if he’s joined there by several former Green Bay teammates and will be running the offense of coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, with whom Rodgers was close years back in Green Bay.
It could prove interesting how the Jets handle the 39-year-old Rodgers’ workload with four preseason games, starting with the Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 3 against the Browns. But if Rodgers takes his own advice about being himself, given how little he’s played in the preseason in recent years, he might pass.