Peter Schrager: Aaron Rodgers Reached Out to Jordan Love After NFL Draft

The existence of an impending cold war in Green Bay has been one of the hottest post-NFL Draft topics and for good reason because the idea of acrimony between Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love is sexy. Hell, I am almost personally offended the Packers did not get the future Hall of Fame quarterback offensive weaponry in the first round and instead selected his potential successor.

Peter Schrager of the NFL Network and Fox Sports provided some perspective on the situation while appearing on the latest Bill Simmons Podcast, dropping a juicy morsel along the way.

"It hasn't been made public but I know that Rodgers has reached out to Jordan Love and has done so privately," Schrager said.

Assigning motivations and divining feelings from a distance is tricky, but reaching out to the new guy is not something a person who has totally shut down would do. To hear that Rodgers is engaged and willing to do the necessary legwork to make the situation work is illuminating. And perhaps not as fun as speculating that there's a blowout destined down the road.

Schrager explained the Packers' calculus in selecting Love, making the point that adding any of the offensive weapons still on the board at No. 26 wouldn't have instantly elevated the offense to world-beating status, which is entirely fair.

"They thought this out," he said. "They also thought that he's a mature enough leader and he's a 35-year-old guy who got absolutely a terrible experience as a rookie as he came to Favre. There was bullying, there was stuff that he's spoken about, that Favre has come out and talked about and they've come full circle. He'd be as big a hypocrite as there would be if he came in and treated Jordan Love that way and wasn't open to the idea of at least having a younger quarterback in the room."

It's entirely possible Rodgers is being given far too little credit from the pundit class. That's the best-case scenario for Green Bay. It'd be funny if a major reason for drafting Love was Rodgers' capacity to handle it better than Favre did and the overwhelming reaction was to crush him.