I've long said the Love pick IS NOT what I'd have done but the logic of it is easily understood if someone just steps back and removes emotional connections with what they wanted.
You don't need any emotional connections to dislike the Love pick, or any of the first three for that matter without even thinking about WRs.
QB failure rates of guys coming out of the first or second round is very high, with the second round being where Love belonged. Failure rates are extremely high from the middle of the first round down. Among current players, Brees and Wilson were 2nd. and 3rd. rounders as notable exceptions, who happened to be short guys when that mattered more to talent evaluators at large which also goes to show how fallible the group think can tend to be. Brady is of course sui generis. Instead, consider the many others who have wallowed in mediocrity or worse, often big studs with big arms drafted off of physical traits while mind reading is universally spongy.
So, there's a window of opportunity now, at its peak and declining next year with the list of upcoming free agents, and here we are expending a first round pick on a high risk proposition for some undetermined future date where the odds of failure are much higher than the odds of current success no matter how many years Love holds the clipboard. It didn't even need to be a WR to add a player with a decent chance of being a value-add by playoff time.
It seems to me that the experience of having Rodgers fall into the Packers lap, chosen by evaluators who are no longer around by the way, have given Packer fans who support this pick an exaggerated sense of the odds of success.
If you want dispassion, consider the following factor is favor of this pick. At the time of the draft it was evident that league revenue was at high risk with future cap bumps in doubt. If Rodgers was getting very expensive cap-wise in 2020 going forward before Covid hit, that $40 mil cap cost in 2022 is looking astronomical in light of possible cap constraints. I suppose come 2022 one could envision something like the 2017 Eagles, with a stout defense and Love running some Foles-like RPO thingee. While that's possible, it's a long shot compared to the current window. But if you're going that way, then this draft should have loaded up on defensive players ready to go in year 2.
Lots of hedging of bets in this draft at the cost of overvaluing the top 3 picks. And it sure doesn't look like, "It's always win now in Green Bay, Wisconsin," the Gutekunst explanation for last year's free agency haul. If ever there was a "win now", this should be it.
