All that matters is whether Packers can properly assess Jordan Love by season's end

Jordan Love may or may not last long in Green Bay, but the Packers just need a definitive answer by the time 2024 arrives.

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The optimism with which the Green Bay Packers began the 2023 season has all but faded away over the last month. Not only has the team dropped three straight games, but the play of quarterback Jordan Love has dropped off considerably since the opening weeks, renewing questions about his future in Green Bay.

Love's first season at the helm opened with fireworks. The Packers' signal-caller delivered six touchdowns and zero turnovers over his first two starts of the year while leading a 17-point fourth-quarter comeback in his third. That run compelled no shortage of analysts -- including those calling Green Bay games -- to declare Love a success, extending the franchise's run of high-end QBs dating back to Brett Favre's rise in the early 1990s.

That narrative made a 180-degree turn soon thereafter. The Packers stumbled badly against the Detroit Lions in prime time with Love turning the ball over twice and sailing passes over the heads of multiple open receivers. With a chance to rebound against a poor Las Vegas Raiders defense, Love performed even worse, throwing one of the worst interceptions by anyone this season on his way to a three-turnover outing.

With a bye week to self-scout and reflect, Packers head coach Matt LaFleur believed he and his staff would find the right adjustments and come out guns blazing against a woeful Denver Broncos defense. That too proved foolhardy with the offense delivering, in context, its worst performance of the season.

The Packers haven't entered the win column in over a month and Love hasn't played well for more than half in even longer. The team and the quarterback on which it invested a first-round pick and three years of seasoning have come under intense scrutiny, and not undeservingly so. While Green Bay cannot yet reach a definitive conclusion on Love's future, his long-term outlook has never looked less rosy. Regardless of whatever support the club's leaders express publicly, they undoubtedly have aired concerns to one another behind closed doors.

But the Love experiment flaming out wouldn't represent the worst-case scenario for the Packers. Rather, only the team exiting the 2023 season without knowing whether or not the former first-round pick can hold down the job long term would result in total failure.