Agent’s Take: Why Packers’ Jordan Love has case to become NFL’s highest-paid player with potential extension

Jordan Love’s contract situation moves to the forefront for the Green Bay Packers. The quarterback became eligible for a new deal on May 3. That’s when the one-year waiting period under the NFL collective bargaining agreement for Love to sign a new deal ended.

The Packers and Love both hedged their bets in signing a one-year, $13.5 million contract extension worth up to $22.5 million through salary escalators dated May 3, 2023. The deal was in lieu of the Packers making a decision about picking up the 2020 first-round pick’s fully guaranteed $20.272 million fifth-year option for 2024.

Love is scheduled to make $11 million in 2024, thanks to earning $5 million of the $9 million salary escalator due to his 2023 performance, playtime and Green Bay’s success. His 2024 salary cap number is $12,757,731.

Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst indicated at the NFL annual owners meeting held in late March that preliminary contract discussions had taken place. Aaron Rodgers, Love’s predecessor as Packers quarterback, is likely going to loom large in negotiations of a new deal for a variety of reasons.

One interesting twist is that Love and Rodgers are both represented by the same agency, Athletes First, but by different primary agents. Rodgers has David Dunn, who co-founded Athletes First in 2001. Love’s agents are David Mulugheta and Andrew Kessler. Expect how the Packers treated Rodgers with his veteran contracts to be used against Green Bay because of the same agency dynamic.

Rodgers’ first contract extension

There is a school of thought that Love doesn’t have enough of a track record for the Packers to make a massive financial commitment to him. Rodgers had a smaller body of work when he was given his first veteran contract. The Packers signed Rodgers to a five-year extension averaging $12.704 million per year seven games into his fourth season — his first as a starter — at the beginning of November in 2008.

The deal made Rodgers the NFL’s fourth- or fifth-highest paid player depending on interpretation. Rodgers was fourth behind Carson Palmer, Ben Roethlisberger and Peyton Manning’s respective deals with the Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts averaging $16,166,667, $14,664,417 and $14 million per year provided Michael Vick is excluded.

Technically, Vick remained under contract with the Atlanta Falcons until June 2009…