Culture
Packers, Jordan Love agree to 4-year, $220 million extension
The Green Bay Packers and quarterback Jordan Love have reached an agreement on a four-year, $220 million contract extension, league sources said Friday. The deal also includes a record $75 million signing bonus and $155 million in new full guarantees, per sources, making Love the highest-paid NFL quarterback.
Love’s new deal puts him in line with Trevor Lawrence and Joe Burrow, all of whom are earning $55 million per year as the top-paid quarterbacks on an annual basis. Those figures come in above quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa ($53.1 million per year), Jared Goff ($53 million per year), Justin Herbert ($52.5 million per year) and Lamar Jackson ($52 million per year).
The agreement also ends Love’s “hold-in” as the quarterback decided to skip practice until he received a new contract. Love reported to camp on time and will participate in other team activities outside of practice.
Love participated in all offseason activities even without a new contract, but the quarterback’s representation informed the Packers just before the start of training camp that he wouldn’t practice.
“I feel we’re close,” Packers GM Brian Gutekunst said at the start of training camp.
GO DEEPER
Paying Jordan Love this much is a big risk, which Packers are no strangers to with QBs
Love, 25, was set to enter the final year of his contract and is coming off a breakout first season starting in which he helped the Packers to a surprise divisional-round playoff appearance. He threw for 4,159 yards, 32 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 17 regular-season games.
He now heads into his second season as the Packers starter after sitting four years behind current New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers. The Packers and Love agreed on a one-year contract extension ahead of last season that only tied the quarterback to Green Bay through this coming year. That extension was worth up to $22.5 million, including $13.5 million fully guaranteed.
Why Green Bay made this deal
The Packers shocked the NFL when they traded up in the 2020 first round to draft Love with four years remaining on Rodgers’ contract. Love bided his time for three years behind Rodgers and the long game paid off for him, Gutekunst and the organization that kept faith in their new franchise quarterback.
The Packers are hoping Love can follow in the footsteps of Brett Favre and Rodgers and give them three consecutive Hall of Fame quarterbacks, though Love has plenty more to accomplish to get there after a breakout first year starting in which he was arguably the NFL’s best quarterback the second half of the regular season.
In his first three years in the NFL, Love only started one game, a Week 9 loss to the Chiefs in 2021 on short notice after Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19. Love struggled under relentless pressure from Kansas City as the Packers only scored once in a 13-7 loss, but Gutekunst was impressed with Love’s ability to persevere through adversity. In addition to three years of watching Love behind the scenes and in practice, the Packers felt confident enough to hand the reins of the offense over to an unproven 24-year-old.
Their decision paid off, and Green Bay looks to have struck gold again in the form of a player now tied for the highest-paid player in NFL history. — Matt Schneidman, Packers staff writer
Required reading
(Photo: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
Culture
Do You Recognize These Lines From Popular Science Fiction?
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Culture
Test Your Memory of These Books That Changed the World
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Culture
Finding Wisdom in a Poem by Wendy Cope
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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