To Wait or Not to Wait: Different Paths for Love, Williams

While Caleb Williams will learn as he goes with the Chicago Bears, the Green Bay Packers’ Jordan Love learned valuable lessons during his three years behind Aaron Rodgers.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love won both starts against the Chicago Bears last season. / Tork Mason / USA TODAY NETWORK

GREEN BAY, Wis. – In Chicago, expectations are skyscraper-high as the Caleb Williams era has started with hype and potential.

Maybe Williams, who is being thrown right into the fire, will emerge from the flames and ashes unscathed and become the franchise-shifting quarterback the Bears have craved for years. Or perhaps he’ll be engulfed in the inferno.

In time, the NFC North could be dominated by the Green Bay Packers’ Jordan Love and the Bears’ Williams, two talented quarterbacks who took vastly different paths to their quarterbacking throne.

Love, of course, watched and learned behind Aaron Rodgers for three years before leading the Packers to the playoffs as a first-year starter last year.

“A lot of quarterbacks in this league are talented. They’re just not ready for the situation,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur told Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer. “They don’t have the right people around them. It’s such a different game, in terms of how much information they have to take in, in order to process and be able to play fast.”

Love’s education wasn’t just about learning how to read defenses or adjusting to the speed of the game or mastering the offense. It was about … everything. In some ways, the intangibles are almost as important as the tangibles.

Williams will be learning it all on the fly.

Williams won a Heisman Trophy at USC and is viewed as one of the top quarterback prospects in years. Love was viewed as a potential-packed prospect coming out of Utah State.

At those schools, they could win through talent. In the NFL, talent only gets you so far.

Failure might not have been an option for the NASA team trying to save the Apollo 13 team, but it’s part of everyday life for an NFL quarterback.

"Being on the bench for those three years, seeing a season, seeing how Aaron went about it, that’s what got me to understand that stuff’s not going to be perfect in the NFL,” Love told Breer. 

Green Bay head coach Matt LaFleur believes fifth-year quarterback Jordan Love is becoming one of the ‘real dudes’ at the position after he waited three years to start, writes @AlbertBreer https://t.co/bjUapvd3L8

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) August 12, 2024

“You watch one of the greatest quarterbacks ever do it and it’s hard for him. If it’s hard for him, you know it’s hard for everyone out there. It’s a team sport. It takes everybody out there on the field doing their job.”

Rodgers won four MVPs with the Packers, including with Love serving as his backup in 2020 and 2021. That it was hard even for one of the game’s all-time legends would be an important lesson for Love as he fought through the trials and tribulations of being a first-year starter.

Before the 2023 season began, with Rodgers in New York and Love getting ready for his big debut at Chicago, Rodgers told Packers On SI that Love was ready to unleash all he had learned.

“It’s really, really exciting because you go from being the guy in college. Now you’re sitting and watching and learning.” Rodgers said. “You’ve always been the guy, then you get to a team and you realize, ‘Oh, there’s a guy out there who’s better than me.’ Then it’s the task of, ‘All right, I’m going to learn what this guy does and I’m going to figure out why he’s doing this and why he’s doing that.’

“And then it’s creating your own identity and leadership style: all the things that he has done. He had three years, just like I had three years, and now it’s all the other fun stuff for him. Now he gets to figure out the kind of leader that he wants to be to the guys, and he has all the clout as a starting quarterback now. So, it’s just like I told him, just be yourself.”

Love overcame a mistake-filled stretch of games to put together a Rodgers-esque streak to get the Packers into the playoffs. One “holy s—t” play in particular solidified LaFleur’s belief that Love wasn’t just a talented thrower of the football but that he had the feel necessary to play the game.

A couple weeks ago, the Packers rewarded him with a $220 million contract extension.

“I think all that goes back to remembering where you came from, remembering being the backup, being behind the guy that was in that position, seeing how he goes about his business,” Love told Breer. “And just remembering my first year, when there were a lot of question marks, how this team had my back. Now we’re in a different spot. So don’t change up. Be a good teammate. Be all these things that I’ve been.

“That’s the reason why guys respect you, respect the work you put in everyday, being out there on the field with them, trying to be a leader as best I can. I’m trying to definitely not switch up and do anything different. Just remember where you came from.”

The Packers were right about picking Love, and they handled his development the right way, too. If the Bears are right about Williams and his development, the NFL’s most-storied rivalry will be one of its most intense for the next 10 or 15 years.

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