Ask Jon Anything: What's my worst take?

Welcome to another edition of Ask Jon Anything. In this edition: bad takes, new names, and birds.

NoMisery - What was your worst take you regret making? And what was your worst take you still defend today? Can be anything, not only football or sports related.

My most controversial take remains my initial — and I do mean initial — reaction to the Jordan Love pick in 2020. Moments after the pick was announced, I tweeted that the move was “indefensible.” Of course, that’s inaccurate. There were perfectly defensible reasons for picking Love. I regret phrasing things that way, since it overshadows other legitimate criticisms of the pick.

(A quick summary of those criticisms: the Packers had a fractious relationship with Aaron Rodgers and found themselves potentially in need of a quarterback in large part because they’d spent the previous few years doing practically nothing to help him and at times seemed to be actively actively antagonizing him. They’d just spent wildly in free agency the previous offseason but suddenly decided to change tack and build for the future, not just with the Love pick but with the A.J. Dillon selection as well. They’d also just extended Rodgers’ contract in 2018, making it financially difficult to move on from Rodgers in a timely manner if he didn’t retire, and the contract extension all but ensured he had no reason to retire, which made the window for Love’s evaluation ultra-narrow.)

But the fact that I still talk about a one-word reaction years later is a good lesson. I think if I’d limited what I’d said to just the actual criticisms of the pick, things would have been much better for me in the long and short term, but I can’t undo those takes, so it is what it is.

And in large part, I think they still hold: the Love situation is not settled. Maybe that should lead into the second part of this question. I don’t consider this one of my worst takes, but it should probably be up there with “indefensible” as one of my most controversial takes, but I think that if the Packers don’t win a Super Bowl with Jordan Love, Brian Gutekunst should be fired. If Love can’t get to the level the Packers need to actually win a a Super Bowl, Gutekunst shouldn’t get a second chance to find a franchise quarterback. Gutekunst’s legacy, to this point, boils down to shepherding out the last of the Ted Thompson-era stars (Rodgers, Davante Adams, Aaron Jones, Jordy Nelson, Clay Matthews, etc.) to build the team his way, and the linchpin of that effort is Love. If Love fails, Gutekunst should go with him. I’ll defend that one as long as I have to.

Or, if you want an actual bad take, how about being so excited about the Packers signing Martellus Bennett that I put together what is still the only emergency episode of Blue 58 in the show’s nearly 10-year history? That one did not age well at all, but given how the Packers handled free agency circa 2017, I’ll still defend it.

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