You can’t deny the track record of the Green Bay Packers when it comes to quarterbacks. The team has produced back-to-back Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and, while a lot has to do with the talents/skills of Favre and Rodgers, players don’t generally succeed to that degree without the right organization backing their efforts.
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst shed some light on his organization’s philosophy when it comes to developing field captain quarterbacks.
“There’s some things we believe in here—developing quarterbacks, and drafting quarterbacks to develop,” Gutekunst recently told Peter King of NBC Sports. “We believe in allowing them to sit and learn a little bit before they have to play. It’s an organization thing. It’s the route. It’s trying to make the best decisions to win today but also understanding that there’s gonna be a tomorrow and not sacrificing that.”
There’s definitely been a pattern when it comes to the franchise and their QBs.
Back when the team selected Rodgers in the first round of the 2005 NFL draft, they sat the future four-time MVP for three full seasons behind starter Favre– with just a total of 59 live pass attempts in that period of time. There was talk at the time about whether the kid from the University of California, Berkeley would ever be anything more than a glorified backup.
But Rodgers’ time came in 2008 after, ironically enough, Favre, like Rodgers this past offseason, was traded to the New York Jets. His apprenticeship under Favre would turn out to be an undeniably stellar education and would help prepare him for his own run at the top, which resulted in an 8-year run of making the post season and a Super Bowl victory.
“Obviously I was a road scout at the time so I wasn’t here making those decisions,” Gutekunst said about the Packers’ transition from Favre to Rodgers about 15 years ago. “I always wondered: If we had a traditional owner, we would’ve been very close to Brett I’m sure, and what would we have done [in 2008]? But I do think this place, because of what we believe in and the stability of it, is a little bit different. This place, I think, is about what’s doing right for the team each and every day. Sometimes those are complicated decisions. But no one’s ever come to me and tried to make me compromise that.”
Now, new starting quarterback Jordan Love finds himself in the same position Rodgers did back in the day. After serving a two-year apprenticeship under Rodgers’ lead, with just one game started and 83 total pass attempts, the 2020 no. 1 draft pick is getting his chance to apply those lessons learned.
Time will tell if the Green Bay quarterback legacy continues or if, maybe, producing back-to-back QB legends was just really, really good fortune.
