Over the coming days, Acme Packing Company will conduct a new exercise to commemorate the 2025 offseason. There have been 25 football seasons played since the calendar clicked over to the year 2000, a full quarter of a century. In that time, the Green Bay Packers have been one of the NFL’s most consistently successful franchises. Although they have just a single Super Bowl title in that time frame, they also have just five losing seasons against 16 years with double-digit wins in the regular season.
That 25-year span has seen a tremendous number of exceptional players come through Green Bay, leading us to put together this project. With the help of our readers and community, we are going to assemble the definitive best lineup of current and former Packers who played for the team from 2000 to 2024. Specifically, we want to examine players for their contributions only in Green and Gold and only during that time span; as a result, we will be presenting statistics and narratives from 2000 onwards, providing only a small amount of context for players who were with the team in the 1990s.
Creating a starting lineup can be a bit challenging, however, given the changes in position groupings and schemes over the last two-and-a-half decades. Still, we’re going to give this a shot by including a couple of extra lineup slots on both offense and defense to account for some positional flexibility.
Here’s the list of positions that we will be voting on over the next several days:
Offense (13 total)
Quarterback
Running Back
Fullback
Wide Receiver (3)
Tight End
Left Tackle
Left Guard
Center
Right Guard
Right Tackle
FLEX
Defense (13 total)
Interior Defensive Line (3-4 DT/DE and 4-3 DT) (2)
Edge Rushers (3/4 OLB or 4-3 DE) (2)
Off-Ball Linebackers (2)
Boundary Cornerbacks (2)
Slot Cornerback
Safeties (2)
FLEX Front 7 (IDL, EDGE, or LB)
FLEX DB (CB or S)
Today, however, we get underway at the quarterback position. There are only three feasible choices over the past 25 years, thanks to the Packers’ incredible string of success at scouting, drafting, and developing the position.
Quarterback Nominees
Note: All stats shown are as a member of the Green Bay Packers only, from the 2000 through 2024 seasons only.
Brett Favre (2000—2007)
3x second-team All-Pro, 3x AP MVP runner-up, 4x Pro Bowler
Team regular season record as starter: 78-50
Team postseason record as starter: 3-5
Regular season stats: 128 games played/started, 2718 completions, 4407 attempts (61.7%), 30,761 yards, 207 TDs, 147 INTs, 84.3 passer rating
Postseason stats: 8 games played/started, 168 completions, 272 attempts (61.8%), 1,921 yards, 14 TDs, 16 INTs, 75.6 passer rating
The first part of the 2000s was the Brett Favre show in Green Bay. With Mike Sherman in control as the Packers’ head coach and GM, Favre had plenty of leeway to lean into his gunslinging ways, with varied success. The team did not make an NFC Championship Game appearance under Sherman, however, who first had GM duties taken away when Ted Thompson was hired (more on him in a moment) and then was fired and replaced with Mike McCarthy.
McCarthy managed to rein Favre in, and he was the MVP runner-up in his final season with the Packers. That 2007 team was a bad throw away from the Super Bowl, falling to the New York Giants in the team’s first NFC Championship Game appearance in a decade before Favre retired in the offseason, seemingly turning the keys to the franchise over to Aaron Rodgers. Of course, Favre unretired a few months later and Thompson traded him to the New York Jets.
Favre’s final eight years in Green Bay were less successful than his first eight, both from a team and an individual perspective. Still, he maintained his consecutive games started streak through that span and a few of his most memorable on-field moments came this century, including a legendary performance following the death of his father. We just won’t get into the off-the field stuff that has taken place since his departure from Green Bay.
Aaron Rodgers (2005—2022)
4x NFL MVP, Super Bowl XLV MVP, 4x first-team All-Pro, 1x second-team All-Pro, 10x Pro Bowler
Team regular season record as starter: 147-75-1
Team postseason record as starter: 11-10
Regular season stats: 230 games, 223 starts; 5001 completions, 7660 attempts (65.3%), 59,055 yards, 475 TDs, 105 INTs, 103.6 passer rating
Postseason stats: 21 games played/started; 501 completions, 774 attempts (64.7%), 5,894 yards, 45 TDs, 13 INTs, 100.1 passer rating
The 24th overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft, Rodgers sat behind Favre for three years, then picked up where his predecessor left off in the 2008 season. Although the Packers went just 6-10 that season, the signs were there that Rodgers could become an elite quarterback, and he started a run in 2009 that would see him go on to be the NFL’s all-time leader in passer rating, adjusted yards per attempt, and interception rate.
Along the way, Rodgers won four NFL MVP awards and led the Packers to a victory in Super Bowl XLV in his third season as a starter. The statistics speak for themselves, and too often the team’s defense was the culprit in early playoff exits — or heartbreaking NFC Championship Game losses, of which there were four during Rodgers’ tenure. Still, Rodgers is the team’s all-time leader in Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value metric (beating out Favre by a small amount) and he is one of only two players to win more than three MVP awards (one behind Peyton Manning, who has five).
The Packers drafted Rodgers’ own heir apparent in 2020, however, and history repeated itself as they traded Rodgers to the Jets during the 2023 offseason.
Jordan Love (2020—2024)
Team regular season record as starter: 18-15
Team postseason record as starter: 1-2
Regular season stats: 42 games played, 33 starts; 690 completions, 1087 attempts (63.5%), 8,154 yards, 60 TDs, 25 INTs, 95.1 passer rating
Postseason stats: 3 games played/started; 57 completions, 88 attempts (64.8%), 678 yards, 5 TDs, 5 INTs, 83.4 passer rating
Picked 26th overall in 2020, Love’s story is largely yet to be written, but he has done an admirable job in taking Rodgers’ place under center. The Packers made the postseason as a Wild Card in both of Love’s two seasons as a starter, even becoming the first 7-seed to win a playoff game by defeating the 2nd-seeded Dallas Cowboys in the 2023 Wild Card playoffs. He will have a chance to define the start of the next quarter-century and continue to extend the Packers’ impressive string of quarterback play in 2025 and beyond.
Poll
Who was the best Packers quarterback from 2000-2024?
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Brett Favre (2000-07)
(0 votes)
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Aaron Rodgers (2005-22)
(0 votes)
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Jordan Love (2020-24)
(0 votes)
0 votes total Vote Now