Packer Central

You’ll Love This 2020 NFL Redraft

Right or wrong, the Green Bay Packers' first-round selection of Jordan Love will be the most-scrutinized selection of the 2020 NFL Draft. What if there were a do-over?

Bill Huber

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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The 2020 NFL Draft forever changed the trajectory of the Green Bay Packers. If general manager Brian Gutekunst could be like Cher and turn back time, would he do the same thing in a 2020 NFL redraft?

By not just drafting quarterback Jordan Love in the first round but moving up to get him, it permanently altered the relationship between the franchise and grudge-holding quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Rodgers parlayed his irritation into back-to-back MVPs. With Rodgers having returned to elite status, the Packers had to twist themselves into pretzels to stay in the quarterback’s good graces. That led to an unorthodox new contract last offseason and a trade to the New York Jets this offseason.

Beyond the quarterback-franchise dynamic, drafting Love meant the first-round pick would provide no help to a roster that was good enough to reach the NFC Championship Game in coach Matt LaFleur’s first season.

Would Gutekunst do it all over again?

The answer, no doubt, will depend on how Love plays in Year 1 as Green Bay’s starting quarterback.

In a redraft of the 2020 NFL Draft, Sports Illustrated’s Gilberto Manzano stuck with Love with the 26th selection.

“If Love is as good this season as [Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua] Tagovailoa was last year, he definitely warrants being a first-round draft pick,” Manzano wrote.

Entering the 2020 draft, the Packers had two glaring weaknesses.

One was at receiver, with all the eggs placed in Davante Adams’ basket. With the Vikings having taken Justin Jefferson and the San Francisco 49ers having selected Brandon Aiyuk, Gutekunst traded up for Love rather than standing pat and grabbing Tee Higgins, who went to the Cincinnati Bengals with the first pick of the second round.

In the redraft, Jefferson went fourth, Higgins went 10th and Aiyuk went 21st.

The second was anyone who could help stop the run. While the Rodgers-led offense wasn’t nearly good enough against the 49ers in the championship game, it was a juggernaut when compared to Green Bay’s putrid run defense, which allowed Raheem Mostert to rush for 220 yards. To that point in his career, that was almost as many yards as Mostert’s best two games combined.

In the real draft, the Packers traded up to get Love ahead of linebackers Jordyn Brooks (No. 27 to the Seattle Seahawks) and Patrick Queen (No. 28 to the Baltimore Ravens) – the only players in the draft class with more than 200 solo tackles. Those players were available in the redraft.

Click here to see the whole redraft, including which quarterback would have alleviated the Jets’ need for Rodgers.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.

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