Jordan Love, the Packers QB Paid $55 Million a Year, Is Still a Fantasy Waiver Pickup

Jordan Love just played the kind of game franchise quarterbacks are paid to play, and the market that judges quarterbacks one week at a time still is not sure it wants him. After he took the Chicago Bears apart at Lambeau Field, ESPN’s fantasy desk put him at the top of its free-agent pickups, right alongside his own running back, MarShawn Lloyd. The quarterback Green Bay pays like one of the best in the league is sitting unclaimed in more than half of ESPN’s leagues.

The easy read is a waiver tip: soft matchup coming, grab him. The harder one is about the man. Love’s career has never moved in a straight line. It moves in runs, cold stretches that test everyone’s patience and hot ones that make the patience look obvious. Fantasy managers are not ignoring his talent. They are pricing his pattern, and Sunday was the latest swing in it.

Jordan Love against the Bears: the game that answered January

The Bears were not a random opponent. Green Bay had blown double-digit fourth-quarter leads in its last two losses to Chicago, according to ESPN, including last season’s 31-27 wild-card defeat after leading 21-3 at halftime. Love threw four touchdown passes in that playoff game and still went home. This time he completed 25 of 31 passes for 367 yards, hit Christian Watson for touchdowns of 42 and 53 yards, and threw no interceptions in a 31-7 win that lifted the Packers to 3-2. The yardage was the most by a Packers quarterback against the Bears at Lambeau, and his 137.5 passer rating was a regular-season career high.

“We kept our foot on the gas,” Love said afterward. “That’s what it needs to look like, right there.” From the quarterback of a team that had twice let this opponent climb back, that is less a celebration than a report on the thing that had been missing.

Packers.com noted that the game put Love next to Aaron Rodgers as the only Packers quarterbacks with 350-plus yards, multiple touchdowns, no interceptions and a completion rate above 80 percent in a single game. Rodgers did it twice. Love spent three seasons behind him before the job was his.

Why fantasy managers still doubt Jordan Love

The splits explain the hesitation. NFL.com’s Matt Okada pointed out that Love completed 52.4 percent of his passes over the first three weeks, then 77 percent with four touchdowns and 9.2 yards per attempt over the last two. ESPN’s Eric Karabell, who led his list with Love, put it plainly: the quarterback is inconsistent, which is why he remains available in so many leagues. Sports Illustrated’s Michael Fabiano has him at 63 percent rostered on Sleeper, barely over his own cutoff for a pickup.

The pattern is older than this season. At Utah State, Love threw 17 interceptions in his final college year, the most in major college football, and the Packers still traded up with Miami to take him 26th overall in 2020. In 2024 he threw an interception in each of his first eight games, then none in his last seven regular-season games. Before that season, Green Bay had already answered the question fantasy managers keep asking: a four-year, $220 million extension, $55 million a season, $155 million guaranteed.

That is the gap between the two markets. The Packers paid for the ceiling, the stretches when he plays the way he did against Chicago. Fantasy rosters pay for the floor, and Love’s floor has been the cold opening weeks of a season. Neither read is wrong. They are measuring different halves of the same quarterback.

MarShawn Lloyd and the Packers’ empty backfield

Lloyd is the other name at the top of ESPN’s list, and his rise owes as much to an empty depth chart as to one afternoon. The NFL placed Josh Jacobs on the commissioner’s exempt list at the end of August, which keeps him from practicing or playing while the league reviews his case, and Green Bay traded for Kaleb Johnson from Pittsburgh the same weekend. Lloyd, a 2024 third-round pick, had appeared in only one game over his first two seasons because of injuries.

Against Chicago he scored twice on the ground, the first a 7-yard run for the first rushing touchdown of his career. The volume was thinner: 31 yards on 10 carries. Karabell wrote that it remains difficult to recommend Lloyd or any Packers back, and Fabiano admitted he does not trust Lloyd while still giving him streaming value. He sits at 48.7 percent rostered on ESPN.

Jordan Love vs. the Cowboys on Sunday night

The next test arrives fast. Green Bay hosts the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night, a defense Karabell called awful and Fabiano called bad after Bucky Irving ran through it. Dallas is also the team he beat for his first playoff win: in his first season as the starter, he threw three touchdown passes with a 157.2 rating in a 48-32 wild-card win over the No. 2-seeded Cowboys.

Rodgers, the quarterback Love waited behind, is on the same ESPN list this week, a Steeler now, rostered in 19.3 percent of leagues. Love is the name at the top. Against Dallas he gets one more chance to make the waiver question look strange, and his career says one good Sunday has never been enough to close it.

Tags: NFL, Fantasy Football, Green Bay Packers, Jordan Love, MarShawn Lloyd