2020 NFL Draft: 5 biggest surprises from first round on Day 1
By Peter Panacy
No. 1: Packers Moving Up for Jordan Love
Well, this was quite the NFL Draft blockbuster.
The Green Bay Packers appear to have found their heir apparent for the future Hall of Fame quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, executing a bold trade-up move to land Utah State quarterback Jordan Love at No. 26 overall.
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Rodgers, 36 years old, might not have had the prolific season under first-year head coach Matt LaFleur a season ago. But that doesn’t mean anything about Rodgers being on the decline. No, Rodgers is still about as high-level a quarterback as there can be.
OK, so Green Bay is pulling the same route it went with Rodgers back in 2005 when he was selected in Round 1 of that year’s NFL Draft to be quarterback Brett Favre’s understudy.
That’s fine if it’s in the plans for 2021, perhaps 2022 at the earliest. But there’s zero indication Rodgers is ready to move on from pro football anytime soon, and the Packers are in win-now mode. Using that first-round pick on a player who doesn’t figure into Green Bay’s immediate plans is about as big a head scratcher as there possibly could have been in Round 1.
Again, Love could be a good NFL quarterback, and there were likely some teams closely monitoring how much he’d fall in Round 1.
But for the Packers to take this route when there were other areas of need, well, it was a shocker.