There seem to be two camps quickly forming after the Packers chose to trade up to the 26th pick in the draft to select Utah State QB Jordan Love. The first camp consists of angry Packers fans. Green Bay was a game away from the Super Bowl a season ago. Their offense failed to keep up with Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers, and their defense was the reason the offense had to "keep up". How does a player that won't likely play for three years help that situation?

There's also a second camp: the camp that compares everything about what occurred last night to Aaron Rodgers being selected to replace Brett Favre. Every concern about Love, Rodgers, the financial implications, all of it can just be answered with: "I bet you said that when they took Rodgers."

The truth, as it usually is, is somewhere in the middle. Drafting Jordan Love, if he doesn't play, isn't going to hurt Green Bay any more or less than whiffing on Datone Jones, Mike Neal, Damarious Randall, Quinten Rollins or any other defensive player that was supposed to help Dom Capers turn the defense around. A bad draft pick is a bad draft pick.

That's not to say Jordan Love will end up being a bad player. With any late first-round quarterback, the odds aren't very good that he'll pan out, but the odds are like that for basically every QB. Year after year a dozen QBs get drafted and 25 more are invited to training camps as undrafted free agents. Half the league is still looking for an answer at the position. Hitting on a QB is difficult. Even if he's good, though, it might still end up being the wrong choice.

Why?

Because this situation isn't actually like the Favre/Rodgers situation at all.

Fine. I'll concede the poetic nature of Love being selected 15 years to the day after Ted Thompson made the call of his career, selecting Rodgers to succeed Brett Favre as fans were clamoring for an offensive weapon or defensive help.

I still can't believe that 15 years to the day after this happened, the #Packers draft Jordan Love. Talk about the Circle of Life. https://t.co/V4pPzVojGX — Jason Wilde (@jasonjwilde) April 24, 2020

That, though, is where the similarities end.

First of all, Rodgers is better than Favre. I don't know who still needs to hear that, but they do. Favre's mid-2000s brand of awful (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2008 with the Jets were all seasons with an ANY/A under 6, something that has never happened to Rodgers in a full season) is not something that Rodgers is really even capable of, or anything the Twitter era could handle. Rodgers is also not playing at retirement in the media, in fact he's made his intentions to play into his 40s and play for the Green Bay Packers both very well known. "Legacy" is a term not only thrown around by Rodgers, but it's a word that's been on the tip of Brian Gutekunst's tongue while referring to his future hall-of-fame quarterback all offseason. Gutekunst spoke of Rodgers' legacy-related goals again in last night's press conference after he selected Love.

That brings us to the financial commitment that the club made to Aaron Rodgers. Gutekunst signed Rodgers to a four-year, $134 million dollar contract extension in August of 2018. This included nearly $99 million in guarantees. What the structure of that contract means is that the Packers cannot move on from Rodgers after 2020 via trade or release, or he'll cost them $31.5 million against the cap to play for someone else. They can't move on from Rodgers after 2021, either, or they'll incur $31.5 million of the same problem. If Green Bay moves on after that, they'd save $22 million in cap room, but still have penalties against the cap while Rodgers plays somewhere else for $17.2M in 2022 and $2.9M in 2023.

The Ted Thompson Packers were financially free to do whatever they wanted with Brett Favre. He had signed a 10-year $101.5 million dollar contract in 2001, though the final four years of the deal were virtually non-guaranteed. The cap wasn't then what it is now, but still, there were no financial or cap ramifications from moving on from Brett Favre. Emotional ramifications? Absolutely. Fan-base ramifications? They made a documentary about it. But nothing "real" as far as team-building was concerned.

Let's play out the three possible scenarios for the Packers: