The Green Bay Packers went exactly one season without their starting quarterback appearing on graphics and short lists of MVP favorites. Less than 12 months since the blockbuster trade that sent Aaron Rodgers to the Jets, the Packers are back to their normal offseason form. While there are some real offseason storylines Packers fans can follow, there are also some sort of fun and meaningless ones, like this.

Recent betting odds have placed Packers QB Jordan Love at +1200 odds to win his first MVP award in 2024, which ties him with 49ers Brock Purdy for fifth place. Outside of ridiculous betting odds calculations or “way-too-early” power rankings that have the Packers as a top-three team in the NFC, is there any real merit to such grand expectations for this team? Sort of, I’ll explain.

No One’s Sleeping on Green Bay

While us fans might prefer it when our favorite team gets overlooked, we can’t always be so lucky. If it stands to reason that Jordan Love and a young supporting cast can grow and improve in their second year together, there is probably no reason that this Packers team won’t be better than the previous year, barring injuries and other unforeseen circumstances, of course.

However, the previous NFL season was littered with injury and unforeseen circumstances for other teams. Players like Aaron Rodgers, Joe Burrow, and Kirk Cousins were left out of the “top five QB” debates during the course of 2023. These players will return and crowd the available space for not only general playoff contention, but for the MVP conversations as well.

In 2023, Jordan Love kept up with the QBs who were in MVP conversations for the most part already, and how hard could it be for him to exceed his performance after getting a year of experience under his belt? Love threw only four less touchdown than Dak Prescott, the NFL’s leader in TD passes, and he was top-10 in almost every other meaningful passing statistic.

Whether or not Jordan Love can push himself into the upper echelon of QB play in 2024 and beyond remains unseen, but oddsmakers and talking heads seem to think so, which we all know means very little anyways.

As it stands, the Packers look like they’ll have a real shot at a standoff with the Lions for the NFC North. To add to that; Jordan Love, from a truly objective standpoint, looks like a very capable young QB. We’ll just have to wait and see if they can meet the now-lofty expectations that have been set for them.