Packers QB Jordan Love Talks Aaron Rodgers, NFC North & More with Rich

Every August in Green Bay, 50 to 100 kids stand outside the doors with their bicycles and wait to be picked. Jordan Love has a strategy.

"Try to find the bigger bikes if you can," Love told Rich of the free-for-all that carries Packers players to practice. "Hey, if you got a 10 jersey on, I'm going to go find you."

Now in year seven, Love described a quarterback who is no longer translating in his head. "I know where I need to go with the ball. I know how to make my reads, how to get through progressions," he said. "I'm not learning the offense for the first time."

A big piece of that is the working relationship with Matt LaFleur, who sits in the quarterback room all week and, when the game plan comes together, sits directly next to Love. "We're in each other's ear all the time, make sure we're on the same page," Love said. "Just the comfortability I have being able to bounce ideas off him, tell him if I like plays, if I don't like plays."

LaFleur also lets his quarterbacks put ideas on the board. Love's live example came against Jonathan Gannon's defense two years ago, when the Packers hosted the Cardinals, ran a concept early, watched how it was defended, then built a new route stem off it that became a roughly 50-yard touchdown to Christian Watson on a lean post. "For a play to be born in the midst of the game was pretty cool," Love said.

Sitting behind Aaron Rodgers is the other thing Love keeps coming back to. "Nothing helped my career more than being able to sit," he said, describing two years of practicing, making mistakes with no pressure attached, and watching a quarterback win back-to-back MVPs from a few feet away.

What he took was less mechanical than mental: the day-to-day consistency, the accuracy, the all-time understanding of both the offense and what a defense was trying to take away. "This guy's out here making these crazy throws, making no-look passes, and it's like, man, I want to go do some of the stuff that he's doing," he said. He also learned to interrogate it, asking Rodgers in the meeting room why the ball went somewhere other than where Love expected.

They caught up before a recent preseason game. "Anytime you go chat with A-Rod pregame, it's great. He's a character. He's got so many stories," Love said. "I told him I wish he was playing."

The receiver room looks different. "Romeo and Wicks, both those guys going elsewhere," Love said, before rattling off who remains: Watson, Jayden Reed, Matthew Golden, Tucker Kraft, Samori Toure, Bo Melton. Golden is separating daily in camp. Kraft is limited but coming, and Love expects him week one. "Tuck is a madman out there. He's got one motor."

Micah Parsons is still rehabbing on the side with no timeline, though Love had no trouble endorsing his claim of a 20-sack season. "I believe it," he said.

Rich tried repeatedly to get Love to bite on the Bears rolling into town in week five, and on the opposing coach who has given LaFleur the swim move at the handshake line. Love would not go there. "I've seen clips," he said. "I'm not one to sit around and talk a big game. It's about handling business."

Chicago won the NFC North last year, and reclaiming it is goal number one. The way last season ended, the losses piling up and then the playoff exit, left a sour taste that has turned every camp practice into an exercise in finishing.