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Jordan Love
When I visited Green Bay in late July, there was this undercurrent of excitement, and a little tension—the Packers have a really good, young roster with balance and upside, and the question on how much of the rising young talent can elevate from very good to great.
Last week’s trade for Micah Parsons gives Green Bay a cornerstone that no one is going to have to wait on. He’s already there as a truly elite player at his position.
Now, we’ll see if Love can make it, too.
The good news is he’s a heck of a lot closer than he’s ever been to that, and the proof of that is in the work he’s doing now versus where he was coming out of Utah State five years ago. As an example of it, this summer, Matt LaFleur, Adam Stenavich and the Packers offensive staff had Love drilling down on throwing on-balance on out-breaking throws to his left. It’s normal quarterback minutiae on its face. If you dig deeper, it’s a sign of how far he’s come.
Entering the league, Love had run three offenses in four college seasons, all no-huddle, all tempo, with every call and adjustment coming in from the sideline. As he once described it to me, he probably had 15 plays in for each game he played. So it wasn’t that he couldn’t run an NFL offense. It was that he’d never been asked to do anything that’d approximate one.
That guy is now down to refining certain throws on certain routes to certain parts of the field.
“That’s been the most inconsistent thing for me, those out-breakers to the left where sometimes I’m on the money, sometimes I’m missing inside where that very well could be a pick-six,” Love told me. “There’ve been a couple plays where it should be an easy completion and I miss inside, and the DB has a chance to break it up. It’s just having that mindset where I gotta hit on every throw, if there’s a little separation then I gotta be able to put the ball on the money. If there’s no separation, how can I fit it in that type of window?
“All those things, what I need to focus on is the balance, not falling off my throws to the left and making sure I get everything open, and balance is a big part of that..”
Love then added, on the bigger picture piece of it, “You don’t want to have too many things coach gives you so much to work on— They’ve done a great job coaching-wise of giving me different things to work on, and we can attack that thing, and once you get good at that, get more consistent at that, now it’s, what’s the next thing to focus on?”
The 26-year-old’s second season as starter gave him other things to refine, too.
In assessing his own season, he says, “It was inconsistent," and there is a story to that. He played most of the year hurt, and there was a process, he can concede now, to learning to play hurt as an NFL quarterback. There was the sprained MCL he suffered in the opener in Brazil that cost him two games, and lingered into midseason, which was then compounded by a strained groin suffered in Week 8 in Jacksonville that bothered him the rest of the year.
“It was one of those things where I’d come to practice feeling good, then one little movement might reaggravate it,” he says. “It was more annoying than anything.”
Still, he won’t use it to excuse some of the bumps he had.
And yes, there are throws that still keep him up at night—and, in particular, it’s throws where the fundamentals he’s worked so hard to refine have waned, leading to misfires and missed opportunities. One such throw came in Week 7 against the Texans. With 21 seconds left, and Houston up 22–21, the Texans sent heavy pressure after Love, and the quarterback drifted back, rather than standing in, and tried to give Dontayvion Wicks a shot on a post.
The ball sailed high and behind Wicks and, had safety Eric Murray had eyes on it earlier, very well could’ve resulted in a game-clinching pick for the visitors to Lambeau. Instead, Wicks adjusted, came back to it, Murray closed on him, and it fell harmlessly to the turf after the two jousted for it. Two plays later, Brandon McManus drilled a 45-yard game-winner, but the fundamental lapse stuck with Love.
“They had an all-out [blitz] coming, and pre-snap, I saw it perfectly,” Love says. “I picked up the protection, made the perfect call for it. We have a perfect play call on, Wicks was running a post. And I was running away, I have all the field over here to throw it, and it was off my back foot. I didn’t trust it, I threw it straight down the field, a little bit to the left, and it ended up being a jump ball. Could’ve been a pick, could’ve been a disaster.
“It was a play I’ve hit in practice, throwing to a guy across the field, and that’s the one where it’s like, . You got all that field to work with. That’s a walkoff, game-winning touchdown right there.”
Which, again, is an example of a focus on little things, that implicitly acknowledges that the big stuff has been taken care of. That doesn’t mean he’s perfect, but does show he’s come a long way, and carries good fix-it experience that should serve him well in working through all the details that he is now.
And as he sees it, the more consistent he can be with that stuff, the better chance he has of avoiding the ups and downs—and being the quarterback so many in Green Bay have hoped he could become after his rocket-ship finish to the 2023 season.
As it stands, he’s already gotten ownership of the offense, which has given him license to become a more vocal leader with his teammate. They know how good he can be.
He does, too, and feels the same way about the group that’s around him.
“It’s just the consistency of every day coming out there and taking advantage, not having those moments where it’s like we do everything right and just miss on a play, and have that mindset of, ,” Love says. “Nah, we gotta go out there and have that killer mindset of. We gotta capitalize on every opportunity we get, put that fear in the defense.
“We got a lot of guys, where we can create that fear where they don’t know who to cover, they know who’s gonna get the ball, who’s gonna be hot. We can keep that pressure on them. It’s definitely that consistency that we need, and not having so many highs and lows.”
The scrutiny only got more intense with last week’s trade.
Good thing Love sure looks ready for that.
