Jordan Love and the myth of the third-year leap

First-round quarterbacks like Jordan Love can take huge strides in their third seasons, but such leaps don't happen often.

The past two decades have dealt a blow to many longstanding football axioms. The idea of the franchise running back — a concept once so central to the NFL that as many rushers won AP MVP honors as did quarterbacks during the 1990s — has become the go-to example of antiquated thinking within the sport. For the vast majority of the league's history, teams almost never attempted a fourth-down conversion in plus territory outside of the waning moments of a game. Now, only a select few prefer punting and field goals save for extreme conditions. Even the prerequisite of establishing the run in order to set up the pass has fallen almost completely out of favor save for the few football dinosaurs still roaming the sidelines.

Yet, some outdated concepts still persist despite mounting evidence to the contrary. One such notion, the third-year leap for quarterbacks, continues to permeate within football circles. Nowhere has this conversation taken root more deeply than the case of Jordan Love, the 2020 first-round pick and one-time heir apparent to Aaron Rodgers.

On the surface, the idea of Love or any talented signal-caller breaking out in Year 3 doesn't seem so outlandish. After all, Rodgers famously tore apart the Dallas Cowboys defense coming off the bench in a prime-time 2007 matchup, his first meaningful playing time after spending two seasons holding the clipboard behind Brett Favre. That performance provided the first glimpse at the player Rodgers would ultimately become, a four-time MVP and Super Bowl champion. More recently, Josh Allen went from an inconsistent and often combustible quarterback during his first two NFL seasons to MVP runner-up.

With those cases serving as the backdrop, it comes as little surprise that Love, who possesses myriad physical gifts of his own but has yet to put those tools together on an NFL field, has garnered hype as a third-year leap candidate. Just this past week, former Green Bay beat reporter Tyler Dunne outlined Love's potential for ascension on the Locked On Packers podcast, a show hosted by The Leap's Peter Bukowski. Peter also detailed some reasons to feel optimistic about the former first-round pick's prospects in his discussion with Love's personal QB coach back in February.

Enthusiasm for Love doesn't exist solely among the media. The Packers have done their part to keep the door open for him to take the reins should Rodgers opt to retire a year or two into his new contract.