If there was a team the Packers could trade Jordan Love to, it would be the Cleveland Browns.
Cleveland just traded away Baker Mayfield to Carolina and are close to finding out if Deshaun Watson will be suspended by the NFL.
If Watson does get suspended for being in violation of the NFL’s Personal Conduct Policy, the Browns are left with Jacoby Brissett and Joshua Dobbs. Brissett, 29, has only started five games in the last two seasons with five touchdowns and four picks and Dobbs, 27, has only appeared in six games in his NFL career. Since being a 2017 fourth round pick, he has been traded, waived, placed on injured reserve and then claimed by Cleveland.
The reason why Cleveland is perfect for a trade is because the Browns have a really good roster. They have a pair of very good running backs in Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt, an excellent offensive line and even a good No. 1 wideout in Amari Cooper.
What the Browns don’t have is a quarterback to put it all together. Obviously, Love would be behind the eight ball because training camp starts in a couple weeks, but with the Watson decision looming, the Browns could potentially be desperate.
They don’t want to waste a season relying on the oft-injured Brissett and the unproven Dobbs. Granted, Love is also unproven because he has only started one game, but I still hold firm that we really don’t know what Love can really do.
Maybe what Love showed in Kansas City on Nov. 7 last year is how he will handle pressure. He didn’t recognize the pocket melting around him and he began to panic. Or it could also be a case that he was not ready to play that game as he was thrust into the starting role late in the week because Aaron Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19.
If Watson is suspended for the majority of this season, it’s worth it for Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst to at least pick up the phone. Take the temperature of Browns general manager Andrew Berry and find out how confident he is with his current depleted stable of quarterbacks.
If Berry is not, Gutekunst should start high and offer Love for a late second rounder. Will the Browns give up a second rounder? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that Gutekunst cannot play the leverage game and end up with a third rounder, which is still good value for a quarterback that is unproven.
A lot of you don’t want to trade Love because the Packers don’t have a viable backup aside from him. If the Packers were to trade away Love, the amount of questions surrounding him is only going to get stronger. He will become a free agent in 2024 and will do so by barely getting meaningful snaps now that Rodgers is signed through 2026.
The only reason that Gutekunst would not want to make this trade is because the moment the deal is agreed upon, Gutekunst is also admitting that he made a mistake by trading up to No. 26 for picks No. 30 and No. 136 in the 2020 NFL Draft.
That’s not an easy thing to do, but in the best interest of the team, it’s the right thing to do.
Read More: Browns Are Ripe For A Trade