NFL Analysis
11/23/23
5 min read
Jordan Love's Thanksgiving Breakout Puts Him on Path to Be Packers' Franchise QB
While everyone across America huddled around their couches waiting for a feast, Green Bay Packers QB Jordan Love was the first to eat on Thanksgiving.Â
Love tore into the Detroit Lions on Thursday en route to a 29-22 win. Love completed 22 of 32 passes for 268 yards and three touchdowns. The Lions didn't get any plays back on him. He didn't get sacked or picked off. Love even scampered for a career-long 37-yard run to convert a third-and-1 in the fourth quarter.
From start to finish, Love was a completely different player from the guy we saw crumble against this Lions team back in Week 4. That version of Love had give-or-take 100 pass attempts under his belt, a jumbled offensive line, and a receiving group chock full of players with even less experience than him. He wasn't ready to be a consistent problem-solver yet.
The player we saw ball out on Thanksgiving was ready.
Love's breakout didn't come out of nowhere, though. It's been brewing for the past month. The shackles of inexperience and inconsistency are beginning to come off. Love and the players around him have settled in after being a disjointed, mistake-prone offense for the first half of the season.
It's easy to see in the way Love plays within structure now.
Things Have Flipped
For the season's first eight weeks, Love's trigger within the offense came and went. Sometimes, he would fire without hesitation; other times, he would hold and pat the ball.
With how often the Packers' young receivers ran the wrong routes, hit the wrong landmarks or failed at the catch point, it was hard to blame Love for not always letting it rip without a second thought.Â
That's flipped on its head during the last month. There are still a few busts here and there, but the receiving group has largely cleaned itself up. You don't see nearly as many miscommunications and poor routes from the Packers' young skill players as you did as recently as October.Â
In turn, Love has started to trust the guys around him and let it rip. Love's touchdown throw to Jayden Reed on the opening drive was the perfect snapshot of how he's grown.
There's almost no window to throw this slant to Reed. The cornerback manned up on Reed is playing sticky coverage, and there's a ton of cross traffic coming from Christian Watson's route going the other way.
Love didn't care. He knew if Reed kept running his route and the ball hit him in stride, his guy would finish the play. And that's exactly what happened.Â
Love capped off his day with another sweet touchdown throw within structure, this time to the emerging Watson. TE Tucker Kraft's pre-snap motion to the left gave Love the man coverage indicator he needed, and that was that. Love turned straight to Watson who was running the slot fade and lofted a perfect ball to him for the score.Â
That pitch and catch looks so routine, but for a young Packers offense, it was anything but routine for the first two months of the season.
Love Now Bolder
The other half of the Love breakout equation is his play when things break down. He has rapidly grown into a bold, creative thrower in and out of the pocket. Whereas Love constantly lacked answers and confidence under duress early in the season, all he's done is ball out under pressure the past four games.Â
Love has been one of the best quarterbacks in football when pressured over the last month. Love has generated an even 0.00 EPA per dropback when pressured since Week 9, per TruMedia. A literal zero doesn't sound very good, but remember that bad things usually happen on pressured dropbacks.
Love's 0.0 EPA per dropback when pressured ranks fourth in the league behind only Dak Prescott, C.J. Stroud and Justin Herbert.Â
To share company with three other top-10 quarterbacks, even if on a small sample, is a fantastic sign for Love's recent development.
It's not just showing up in the stat sheet, of course. Love's budding confidence is easy to see in the way he plays. A player who was once as rigid and robotic as ever is starting to find creative throwing angles and make the most of his S-tier arm talent with risky throws on the move.Â
Check out Love's pocket movement and arm angle on this throw to Malik Heath from the second drive of the game. After executing the play fake, Love slides to his left to free himself of the defender looping in through the left tackle's inside shoulder. Love then takes a quick hop to reset and slings the ball sidearm, sticking the throw right into Heath's chest in stride.
Throws like that were few and far between for Love early on, but he's been making this type of play as of late. Love made many throws like this last week against the Chargers and the week before against the Steelers. It will take more than a few weeks to make me believe Love can always be this guy, but this is a great start.
Love's Future
Love is making the Packers' 2024 quarterback decision an easy one. This season was always about evaluating his viability and ceiling as the future of the franchise. It's hard to see why they would move away from him with the way he's playing right now.Â
Love's confidence is only growing, and he's becoming more creative with every snap he takes. That kind of growth trajectory on a player with Love's arm talent and natural aggression is the exact formula that produces franchise quarterbacks.
Four games isn't enough to say Love is definitively there yet, but this is what the beginning of that journey often looks like. Love just needs to stay the course.
