More from the MMQB: Recapping Sunday’s games | Playoff picture | What we learned | Goff for MVP | Rodgers, Wilson paths
On Thursday, it’ll have been precisely a year and a half since the Green Bay Packers agreed to trade Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets for a package yielding two second-round picks and a first-round pick swap. At the time, it seemed like a fair compromise after a couple months of negotiations dragged along.
Now? It looks like the Packers made off like bandits.
That has little to do with Aaron Rodgers’s Achilles injury in Week 1 of last year, or the Jets’ 2–5 start this year. Nor is it even about the players the Packers selected with the picks. First-rounder Lukas Van Ness and second-rounder Edgerrin Cooper dressed as reserves Sunday, and second-rounder Luke Musgrave just landed on injured reserve.
But it’s actually simpler than that. The trade made way for Jordan Love, and a crew of young guys around him, and that’s more than enough to make it a win for Green Bay.
Sunday wasn’t perfect, but it proved that, emphatically, again. The Packers beat a really good Houston Texans team, 24–22, and did it despite Love throwing a couple of first-half picks, Green Bay losing the turnover battle 3–0 and the defense allowing 142 yards on the ground. The Packers did it with the resilience they showed earlier in the year, riding out Jordan Love’s knee injury, and with the steadiness Love has shown since getting the job.
A few minutes after Love orchestrated an eight-play, 44-yard drive to set up Brandon McManus’s game-winning 45-yard field goal, the 25-year-old quarterback had a minute to process how his team had survived a slugfest with another team on the way up. More so, he pushed the conversation to what it showed about the group assembled around him.
“That’s the trust, chemistry,” he told me over the phone from the bowels of Lambeau Field. “It really is those guys making plays.”
Those plays were exciting for everyone at Lambeau, but even more exciting, though, is what could be to come.
