Before there was Michael Penix Jr., there was Jordan Love. Four years before the Atlanta Falcons made the most confusing move of the 2024 draft — selecting Penix eighth after signing Kirk Cousins to big money one month earlier — the Green Bay Packers traded up in the first round to take Love.
This set off a firestorm of criticism. How dare the Packers, with 36-year-old legend Aaron Rodgers still under contract for multiple seasons, use such valuable resources on a quarterback?
They risked alienating Rodgers and could have used that pick on someone (a receiver?) who made the 2020 team better. «You think about those things, but the value of the quarterback position in general really kind of trumps everything else,» Packers GM Brian Gutekunst said last week. «If you have the opportunity to get a quarterback, you have to take it.» This is a core Packers philosophy, rooted in the early 1990s, when then-GM Ron Wolf established organizational priorities that still govern team decisions today.
Even after trading for Brett Favre in February 1992, Wolf drafted Heisman-winning quarterback Ty Detmer in the ninth round of that year's draft.