It’s the start of a new era in Green Bay with Jordan Love taking over at quarterback to replace longtime starter Aaron Rodgers. But there’s one word that Packers star David Bakhtiari would prefer people use when describing it.
Speaking to the media after practice on Wednesday, the Pro Bowl left tackle said that it would be “disrespectful” not to refer to what the Packers are doing now as “rebuilding.” He indicated that the Packers meet every definition of the word and shouldn’t shy away from it.
“How I look at is, it’s disrespectful to say you’re not rebuilding off a Hall of Fame quarterback,” Bakhtiari said, via Fox News. “It was disrespectful to say you weren’t rebuilding off of Brett Favre when you moved to Aaron. No one knew Aaron and what he was going to be, so I’m not going to sit here and like pull back those words because that is, when you look at how it’s been building, how we were chasing after it and the cap – there was a bunch of situations that can definitely allude to it – we have a young team.”
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst has disagreed with Bakhtiari’s sentiment, stating that the team has all of the same goals this year that it did previously despite moving from Rodgers to the largely untested Love.
David Bakhtiari: Packers are rebuilding, that doesn’t mean we can’t win. https://t.co/Y5w69ugDHU
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) June 1, 2023
David Bakhtiari and Aaron Rodgers have been great friends for a long time though unlike some other players, Bakhtiari couldn’t follow Rodgers to New York when he was traded to the Jets.
Bakhtiari will now go from being a student of a quarterback to being the mentor of one. We’ll see how he does in just a few months.