Brian Gutekunst: In Love with a Legacy

There are many reasons why the Green Bay Packers have fans all over the world, with shareholders in every state and in numerous countries. One of the driving motivations behind the fandom is rooted in the history of a franchise that helped form the greatest professional sports league in the entire world. That history spans over 100 years, and during that time, we have had the pleasure of watching some of the most talented, determined, and passionate players to ever represent the NFL.

Looking back over Packers history, it is often easy to paint a player, coach, executive, or team with a broad brush of success, failure, or mediocrity. Individual greats are known across the league: Lambeau, Lombardi, Hornung, Nitschke, Hutson, White, Favre, Rodgers. We also know some of the biggest failures: Rich Campbell, Randy Duncan, Tony Mandarich. We can view coaches, GMs, Presidents, and others who have come and gone through a similar critical lens. But these pictures, defining whether a person falls into the category of success, failure, or somewhere in-between, are not always clear until the dust has settled, and we can see a career of evidence to finish the piece of art that is their legacy with the Packers.

January 8th, 2018 began a new piece of art that will some day hang on the walls of Lambeau Field. The beauty, or possibly the grotesque nature of that piece, is still undetermined. On that date, Brian Gutekunst was named General Manager of the Green Bay Packers.

Gute has served in this position for five years, already surpassing half of the current league GMs in his longevity. His draft picks have included major hits and horrible misses. Guys like Jaire Alexander, Rashan Gary, Elgton Jenkins, A.J. Dillon, and Christian Watson have provided huge impacts and could be a part of the Packers for years to come. Others like J’mon Moore, Cole Madison, Jace Sternberger, Kamal Martin, Simon Stepaniak, and Amari Rodgers left much to be desired.

Gute may be most praised for his free agent signings: Preston Smith, Za’Darius Smith, Adrian Amos, Rasul Douglas, and Keisean Nixon; all of whom made major impacts on the team.

But beyond all of this, and when the painting is finally complete, Brian Gutekunst will be known above all else for one thing: trading up to draft Jordan Love in 2020.

With the off-season drama around Aaron Rodgers, a constant theme keeps rising in every Packers Fan circle I am a part of. This theme seems to focus on which “side” you are on: Rodgers vs Love. Or at a minimum, Rodgers vs Management. It is a weird, twisted way of looking at things, likely born from the days of Favre vs Rodgers and the wounds that some feel still exist between players and management. But my focus is not on what the Packers should do NOW, nor what they can accomplish in the FUTURE with Jordan Love. I want to focus on the picture that has been painted, and why I personally believe Gute’s current painting is overshadowed by one massive failure.

Now, let me take a moment to interject a few thoughts that apparently need to be said. I have heard from many fans who are fed up with the antics of Aaron Rodgers. I have heard from many fans who truly believe that Davante Adams had no desire to continue playing for Green Bay, and that the Packers made the right decision in not paying Adams the type of money he got in Las Vegas. And I want to state that I do not harbor any malcontent toward these opinions. In fact, I believe that there may be some validity to them. What I am focusing on is NOT the childish way Aaron Rodger has, at times, come across in the way he handles his business. It is NOT on what I think Gute should have done with any single player. The painting of Gute will, and should, be shaped by all of these.

Even more than this, the potential long-term success of Jordan Love is also not currently being debated. Jordan Love is still nearly a year younger today, after 3 years of being in the NFL, than Hendon Hooker, the Vols QB who is part of the 2023 NFL draft class! Love could play in the NFL another 15 years and bring multiple Championships to Green Bay. And when the painting is done, Gute may be looked at with fondness and as one of the great architects in Packers lore.

The 2019 season ended with a 13-3 regular season record, a first round bye in the NFC, and high hopes for what the future could hold. Rodgers had just turned 36 and previously said he wanted to play at least until he was 40. That meant four to five more years of potential Super Bowl runs. The Packers seemed to be a piece away. In addition, they seemed to be at least three years away from needing a “draft and develop” QB. At the time, I remember looking at guys like Patrick Queen to help the defense or Tee Higgins to help the offense. When Gute traded up, jumping the Ravens, I thought it was for Queen. But instead, Gute decided he needed to make a name for himself. Despite bringing in free agents to help the team win before the 2019 season, he used his 1st and 4th round picks on a kid who was only 6 months past the legal drinking age, who had only 20 TDs and just as many turnovers his final year of college, and who added NO value whatsoever to the current team.

The shockwave at the time of the Love pick is one I remember vividly. As a well-informed fan, I had done in-depth research on numerous players that the Packers may have targeted in the entirety of the draft. In fact, I had gone as far as ranking my top 100 options. Joe Burrow was the only QB I wasted time putting on the list, despite knowing he would go 1st overall. We did not need a QB. We needed someone to help tip the scale that would send this team to the Super Bowl.

Hindsight is 20/20. This phrase gets thrown around as an excuse by those who choose to eat from the scraps of the Packers Management, rather than discuss what could have and should have been. The truth of the matter is that men such as Queen and Higgins are not just players we look at now, knowing they may have had a big impact; these are guys many of us “arm chair GMs” had on our short list to be drafted near the end of the first round.

The drafting of Jordan Love was the first domino to fall in a disastrous cascade of actions, or often lack thereof, that left the Packers with no Super Bowl appearances under the Gute regime, and a near term future where Green Bay currently sits last in the Vegas odds to win the division in 2023. I believe this domino effect is one of the reasons that a portion of the Packers fandom looks beyond the current issues of Rodgers vs the Front Office and attempts to get to the root of the problem.

Rodgers had just come off a pair of “down” years in 2018 and 2019; years where he had over 4K passing yards each season and an 8.5-1 TD to INT ratio! A reminder, only 3 other QBs in NFL history even possess a 3.0-1 or better TD-INT ratio. In these two years, he was playing without Jordy Nelson, after the Packers decided to part ways with a player a year too early, rather than a year too late. 2018 was also the year that Rodgers suffered a tibial plateau fracture and sprained MCL during week one, an injury that he played through all season, including that dramatic return and come-from-behind victory against the Bears. Rodgers wasn’t a quarterback on the way out. He was one who was still excelling, even through injury.

2019 showed the gaping hole left by Jordy Nelson. Davante led the team with under 1,000 receiving yards and only FIVE touchdowns. Rodgers was trying to lean on guys like MVS, Geronimo Allison, and Jimmy Graham. Thankfully for the Packers, Aaron Jones rushed for 16 TDs, and the offense still found balance. But they seemed to be a piece away in the passing game. Someone needed to fill the shoes of the departed Nelson.

On the defensive side of the ball, the “Smith Bros” combined for 25.5 sacks, but Blake Martinez and BJ Goodson, our inside linebackers, had only three total sacks. The Packers needed ILB help in a bad way.

Flashing back to draft night, I kept coming to Higgins on offense and Queen on defense. Both would have been high-impact players, plug-and-play type of guys who could develop with the likes of Adams as a mentor on offense, and studs like Alexander, Clark, and the Smiths on defense. I felt confident the Packers front office would do the right thing and push this team over the top. That all came crumbling down with the trade up and drafting of Jordan Love, and it has continued to crumble every day since.

This biggest issue with this move was that management was making a clear statement to Aaron Rodgers that his time was nearing an end. In fact, Rodgers has made it very clear that if he hadn’t won his two “Covid MVPs”, as he likes to call them, the team surely would have moved to Love even sooner. From the very moment of that draft pick, the message was that the front office no longer believed in the team that just went 13-3. They wanted to look to the “future” without caring about the present. But the domino effect didn’t stop there.

Davante Adams stepped up in a big way after a down year in 2019 and looked the part of not only a top wide receiver, but maybe the best received in the league. Unfortunately, Adams saw the writing on the wall. He wanted a long-term commitment from the team after the 2020 season, but the front office was not willing to lock him up with expectations that they were also moving on from Rodgers. By the time Gute and company were ready to make an offer, Adams knew he wouldn’t be catching passes from Rodgers for too long and asked to be traded.

Now here we sit. We wait. We hope. Because that is what Packers fans do. We cheer for the team; we hope to go 20-0 with Love winning MVP and bringing the Lombardi back to Titletown. But at the end of the day, there was a very clear window, from 2020 through at least 2024, where the Packers could have been led by the likes of Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, Tee Higgins, Aaron Jones, and likely some fresh faces who wanted in on the success of the Green and Gold. However, it never happened thanks to the mismanagement by Brian Gutekunst. For this reason, I believe his legacy as a GM will be viewed as the guy who swung for the fences a few years too early and brought nothing but pain to the Green Bay Packers. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but Gute’s Love for a Legacy has created a kitsch painting that could have been a masterpiece.