In the 2024 NFL Draft, a team will pick a quarterback who changes the direction of the franchise. Another will pass on a Hall of Famer and take a bust. Still another will win a Super Bowl because of the choices made in this draft. These things happen every year in the NFL in late April. Take 2020 for example when the Green Bay Packers picked QB Jordan Love, much to Aaron Rodgers’ dismay. In that scenario, at least one NFC executive thinks that if the Packers took wide receiver Tee Higgins instead, general manager Brian Gutekunst would have a Super Bowl trophy.
Brian Gutekunst taking Jordan Love in the 2020 NFL Draft is still debatable
Drafting quarterbacks in the NFL draft is an inexact science at best. That’s how you get Jamarcus Russell going No. 1 overall and the greatest of all-time, Tom Brady, slipping to No. 199.
Despite often watching them for multiple years in college against elite competition, the first-round QB bust rate is well over 50%. Still, without a franchise QB, winning a Super Bowl is basically off the table these days, so teams have to keep picking them in Round 1 when the opportunity presents itself.
In 2020, that opportunity presented itself to Brian Gutekunst and the Packers, and the franchise traded up four spots to take Utah State signal-caller Jordan Love at No. 26. The problem here was that the Packers already had a QB in Aaron Rodgers who was coming off a close NFC Championship Game loss in 2019.
Still, the Packers took Love, and four years later, while the young QB had an excellent first season as a starter, Green Bay is no closer to a Super Bowl today than it was on that fateful day in April 2020, and that’s the type of outcome that keeps NFL GMs awake at night.
“It’s a really hard decision because I look at what the Packers did, and that team was just so close to winning a Super Bowl,” an anonymous NFC executive told Ari Mierov of The 33rd Team about drafting a Round 1 QB. “What I wonder is, had they taken an elite receiver and paired him across from Davante Adams, would they have won a Super Bowl? Maybe they do.”
“I wonder if there’s a part of Brian Gutekunst that wonders, had he taken Tee Higgins and now he’s a Super Bowl-winning GM, does that change things?” the exec continued. “Or would I rather have Jordan Love right now? Would you give up Jordan Love to have a Super Bowl in 2020?”
That is a fascinating hypothetical to think about.
What could have been for Aaron Rodgers and the 2021 Packers
Instead of trading up for Jordan Love, if the Packers would have stuck at No. 30, they could have taken Clemson WR Tee Higgins who went No. 33 to the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Higgins went to the Bengals, and in his second season, the combination of Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Higgins helped propel the Bengals to a Super Bowl appearance.
If the talented WR went to the Packers, he would have teamed up with Davante Adams and Aaron Rodgers in 2020, which could have been incredible. That year, Rodgers won the NFL MVP Award with 4,299 passing yards and a league-leading 48 touchdowns. Adams also led the league with 18 receiving touchdowns and had 1,374 receiving yards.
At the end of the campaign, Rodgers, Adams, and the Packers once again lost in the NFC Championship Game, this time to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In that game, the Bucs basically shut down Adams, limiting him to nine catches for just 67 yards and a touchdown. Marques Valdez-Scantling did have 115 yards, but Allen Lazard could only manage 62. If the Packers won that game could they have beaten the Buccaneers and gone on to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl with a banged-up Patrick Mahomes?
What would have happened the next year, in 2021, after Rodgers won his second consecutive MVP award? Adams had even more yards, with 1,553, but Valdez-Scantling and Lazard had even fewer than 2020. Would they have lost to the San Francisco 49ers in the Divisional Round in a game where Adams had nine catches for 90 yards and no touchdowns?
Could they have gotten to a Super Bowl against a (hypothetically) Tee Higgins-less Bengals team or another AFC squad, and won it all?
And if this happened and Aaron Rodgers and the Packers won the Super Bowl, would he still be in Green Bay, fully healthy because he’s not on the concrete turf at MetLife Stadium?
The possibilities are fascinating.
Where the Packers are with Jordan Love
No one knows if Tee Higgins wins the Packers a Super Bowl, and even if he does, would that have made the perpetually ornery Aaron Rodgers happy enough to stay in Green Bay?
What we do know is that Super Bowl aside, the Packers are once in an incredible spot, seemingly transitioning from one Hall of Fame QB to (potentially) another in Jordan Love. They did it years ago in almost the exact same fashion, replacing Brett Favre with Rodgers, and that led to one Super Bowl. Now, they are trying to set up for a similar (or even better) result this time around.
Love is a promising young signal-caller who had a solid first full season as a starter and showed his postseason chops by pulling off an upset against the higher-seeded Dallas Cowboys in the Wild Card Round.
If history repeats itself, the Packers won’t be looking to draft Love’s replacement for another decade and a half or so. Still, Brian Gutekunst should learn a lesson about passing on top wide receivers and offensive weapons in the draft.
Since the Packers’ last Super Bowl win in 2010, the Packers have had 14 first-round draft picks. And shockingly, of those 14 picks, only two — OT Derek Sherrod in 2011 and Jordan Love in 2020 — have been offensive players.
So, Gutekunst and the Packers’ failure to draft Tee Higgins in 2020 isn’t the only time they failed to support their franchise quarterback in the last decade-plus. Hopefully for Cheeseeads, this is one pattern that won’t repeat itself.
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