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Rodgers ranks 12th in ANY/A over his first 33 starts. Love is right behind him at 13th
Plenty of Green Bay Packers fans were surprised that quarterback Jordan Love, despite his injuries in 2024, didn’t take the next step this year. If you look at the production timeline of young quarterbacks, though, Love’s production is actually a positive.
For the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to use Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (ANY/A). ANY/A is more correlated to wins than any raw passing stat or traditional efficiency stats like passer rating.
ANY/A treats passing touchdowns as additional gains of 20 yards, interceptions as losses of 45 yards and includes sacks and sack yards in the per attempt calculation. Since the NFL has only been officially counting sacks since 1981, we’ll look at the quarterbacks from that draft class on.
Since 1981, 164 quarterbacks have been able to record 33 starts at the NFL level. Among those quarterbacks, Love ranks 13th in ANY/A. The only players to post better production than him in their first two seasons and change were Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy, Kurt Warner, Dan Marino, Tony Romo, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jared Goff, Deshaun Watson, Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert and Aaron Rodgers.
Collectively, those players have registered 11 Associated Press NFL MVP Awards, with potentially 12 on the way if Jackson wins this year’s edition over Josh Allen. And yes, Rodgers does rank 12th on the same list — just one spot ahead of Love.
Over his first 33 starts, Rodgers turned 1,108 pass attempts into 8,860 yards, 60 touchdowns, 22 interceptions, 87 sacks and 558 sack yards (6.94 ANY/A). Meanwhile, Love has thrown the ball 1,038 times for 7,738 yards, 58 touchdowns, 23 interceptions, 45 sacks and 348 sack yards (6.83 ANY/A).
So maybe it’s time to pump the breaks on the doom and gloom over Love’s 2024 season. If you’d like to look through EVERY SINGLE quarterback’s first 33 starts since the 1981 draft class, you can find that table below. Drop your favorite stat lines in the comment section. I’m sure there are some interesting ones in there.
