Packers Release Desmond Ridder After Signing Tyrod Taylor, Locking In Their QB Depth Chart

Per NFL Media's Tom Pelissero, the Green Bay Packers are releasing Desmond Ridder, a move that directly follows the team's agreement to sign veteran Tyrod Taylor. Ridder, who joined Green Bay last December and never appeared in a regular-season game for the organization, is out. Taylor is in. The Packers' 90-man roster now carries four quarterbacks: Jordan Love, Taylor, Kyle McCord, and 2025 rookie Kyron Drones.

Ridder's NFL journey has been defined by transience. A third-round pick by Atlanta in 2022, he made 17 starts across his first two seasons with the Falcons before cycling through the Bengals, Vikings, Raiders, and Packers in short order. His career line — 322-of-503, 3,544 yards, 14 touchdowns, 12 interceptions — tells the story of a quarterback who has never convinced an organization to bet on him long-term. Green Bay isn't changing that narrative.

Tyrod Taylor's addition is the sharper signal here. Taylor is a 14-year veteran who has started games for Buffalo, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Houston. He's a known commodity as a bridge arm and emergency starter — reliable enough to step in without cratering an offense, but nobody's threatening Jordan Love's grip on the starting job. For Green Bay, this is about insuring Love, not replacing him. McCord, an undrafted developmental arm, and Drones, the incoming rookie, round out a room that now has a clear No. 1 through No. 4 hierarchy.

For prop bettors, the real takeaway is stability. Jordan Love enters the 2025 season with no plausible path to losing his starting job short of injury. That kind of job security matters when you're evaluating season-long passing props or early-week game lines. Love threw for 3,485 yards and 25 touchdowns in a shortened 2024 campaign where he missed six games — a full healthy season with a competent backup insurance policy rather than a genuine competition behind him is a quiet positive for his volume projections. His passing yards and passing touchdowns props, which opened conservatively at most books in the wake of his injury history, deserve a harder look as camp approaches.

Watch for Love's passing attempts and completions lines to tighten as preseason progresses and Green Bay's offensive identity sharpens under coordinator Adam Stenavich. If Love plays 16-plus games, the over on his passing yards total — likely to open somewhere in the 4,000-4,200 range — looks attractive given how efficiently Green Bay moved the ball when he was healthy. The Ridder cut is noise in isolation; paired with the Taylor signing, it's a quiet confirmation that this organization is building around Love with no hesitation.