A year and some change after moving on from Aaron Rodgers, the Packers have already locked down one of the league's highest-paid quarterbacks in Jordan Love.
Green Bay is signing Love to a four-year, $220 million contract extension that puts him in a tie for the highest-paid player in NFL history, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Friday. Love's deal also includes a record-setting $75 million signing bonus, per Rapoport. The team announced the extension on Saturday.
Love's lucrative deal, negotiated by David Mulugheta and Andrew Kessler of Athletes First, comes out to an average of $55 million per year, knotting him with Jacksonville's Trevor Lawrence, who put pen to paper in June, and Cincinnati's Joe Burrow at the very top of the skyrocketing QB market.
By coming to an agreement, Love, who had elected to sit out training camp practices until a deal was done, can resume working with his teammates on the field.
The pact comes a year after the Packers and Love agreed to a smaller compromise in the leadup to his first campaign as a starter, a deal in which the 25-year-old QB bet on himself and won big.
In 2023, with Love taking over under center, eligible for a fifth-year rookie option but having only started one game prior, Green Bay passed on that $20.72 million price tag and instead extended Love on a one-year deal that included $13.5 million guaranteed but a chance to make up to $9 million more in 2024 after incentives.
Love rose to the occasion by finishing the season second in the NFL in touchdown passes (32), seventh in passing yards (4,159) and 11th in passer rating (96.1). He led Green Bay, the youngest team in the league, to the postseason, where he dismantled the Cowboys with a near-perfect performance for a wild-card victory. Thanks to those efforts, he initially tacked on another $5 million to his 2024 base salary.
The Packers saw fit to add several more years of security and a couple hundred million-plus to his potential career earnings.
It marks a definitive end to the uncertainty that dogged the franchise at quarterback over the past several years and an enormous investment in Green Bay's era of Love.
This outcome wasn't always a certain one, and seemed downright improbable at points of 2023.
Nine games into last season, Love was struggling to the tune of 2,009 passing yards, 14 touchdowns and 10 interceptions with an 80.5 passer rating and a 58.7 completion percentage. The Packers languished at 3-6 with little offensive identity and even less consistency.
Then, things suddenly clicked. He completed 70.3 percent of his passes with a 112.7 passer rating over his final eight regular-season games, throwing for 2,150 yards and an 18:1 TD-to-INT ratio while powering Green Bay to a 6-2 stretch run to sneak into the playoffs.
In the aforementioned postseason win over Dallas, he missed on just five of his 21 passes to finish with 272 yards, three touchdowns and a 157.2 passer rating. He dropped dimes and protected the ball as he had throughout his torrid finish to the campaign.
Love did, however, show alarming glimpses of the early-season version of himself in the subsequent Divisional Round loss to the 49ers. He threw for 192 yards, his lowest outing since Week 6, and after misfiring on a bad interception earlier in the matchup forced another pick playing needless hero ball late.
But the Packers clearly see that disappointment as a learning moment along a bright path for Love, just as they see clearly all the championship-level quarterbacking traits he put on display to reach that stage in the first place.
Now secure in his future, Love heads into 2024 and beyond the head of a young offense teeming with talent at every skill position and with a coach in Matt LaFleur capable of getting the most out of them.
If he continues to prove he's who Green Bay thinks he is, the Packers have just extended their third consecutive franchise QB for the long term.
