If Sunday Was an Audition, Love Failed

Facing statistically one of the worst pass defenses in the NFL, Jordan Love had no answers for the blitz in his first professional start.

The small picture was that Jordan Love wasn’t nearly good enough in his first NFL start. Overwhelmed by the Kansas City Chiefs’ destructive pressure and his inability to beat it, the Green Bay Packers lost 13-7 on Sunday.

This game, however, wasn’t only about the small picture.

Rather, it’s about the really big picture that was painted on April 23, 2020.

That’s when general manager Brian Gutekunst moved up in the first round to select Love, even with Aaron Rodgers under contract and the Packers coming off a trip to the NFC Championship Game.

At that point, a potential timeline was obvious. All rookies sign four-year contracts. First-round picks are eligible for a fifth-year option. Year 5 is not inexpensive. In 2022, for instance, Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield will be paid almost $19 million. Guaranteed.

In the case of Love, the Packers must flip the switch on the option between the 2022 and 2023 seasons. That’s a lot of money to pay a quarterback with little to no experience, meaning the Packers need Love to play in 2022 so it can make an informed decision on 2024.

So, based on one dismal performance, is Love the future of the franchise that he seemingly was anointed 563 days ago?

“It’s a small sample size, right?” coach Matt LaFleur said. “I thought he did a lot of great things. I’ve got to go back and look at the tape. We see him every day in practice, and going against a really good defense, obviously. Our D is performing at a really high level right now. It’s just one of those things, you take it day by day, and you either get better or you get worse. We just need him to take those incremental steps and continue to get better and better and better.”

Facing statistically one of the worst pass defenses in the NFL, Love was 19-of-34 passing for 190 yards with one touchdown, one interception and a 69.5 passer rating. It’s a miracle he was only sacked once. But the Packers started 0-for-9 on third down and went 0-for-1 in the red zone. Love almost threw a pick-six. Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo kept blitzing; Love kept misfiring.

“Anytime you go against zero pressure, if you don’t make a team pay, they’re going to keep running it. And, unfortunately, we didn’t make them play until late in the game,” LaFleur said.

Or, as Love put it, “They were bringing the all-out, they were eating us up and we just weren’t able to execute, so that’s why they kept bringing it.”

As is typical of LaFleur, he took the blame for Love being devoured.

“This one falls on me squarely,” he said.

Love hit just one deep shot, a 35-yarder to Randall Cobb late in the first half. Back after missing last week with COVID, Davante Adams caught six passes for 42 yards. With countless thousands of reps together, Rodgers and Adams practically share a brain. With only one practice together this week, they rarely were on the same page. Adams was targeted 14 times, meaning an average of 3.0 yards per target.

“Really disappointed,” Love said of his performance. “Obviously, you never know when the opportunity’s going to come, and I got it today and not being able to go win that game and, obviously, we had a lot of chances on offense. Defense played a really good game. Gave us a lot of chances, and I think that’s what’s most disappointing is I wasn’t able to execute. As a team, we weren’t able to go finish and get some more points on the board early and it was just too little too late at the end. So, it is very disappointing.”

Going back to the big picture, one game is obviously too small a sample size to make a decision that will alter the franchise one way or another. Either the Packers will go with Love and trade Rodgers. Or the Packers will stick with Rodgers and Gutekunst will have used a first-round pick on a backup quarterback.

While Love is in his second season, this was his first career start. Of the six rookie starters this season, only New England’s Mac Jones had more touchdown passes than interceptions entering this week’s games. Combined, all the quarterbacks drafted in 2020 and 2021 have thrown 87 touchdowns vs. 65 interceptions this season. Love is one of nine quarterbacks drafted in the first round the last two years. Only five have more touchdowns that interceptions, and only Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow (108.0) and the Chargers’ Justin Herbert (94.8) have passer ratings better than the league median of 94.5.

That doesn’t mean a bunch of high draft picks were burned on bad quarterbacks. Rather, quarterback is a difficult position to play. It takes time. It takes time to properly diagnose a blitz. It takes time to build chemistry with receivers to make the adjustments to beat that blitz. It takes rep upon rep upon rep to build that Rodgers-Adams rapport. Love hasn’t had the time to do any of those things.

“The amount of pressure he took and the hits that he took, and to stand in there and still deliver the ball and give us an opportunity at the end of the game, he showed a lot of resiliency,” LaFleur said. “And I think that’s a great quality to have in a quarterback.”

Is Love the legit heir to Rodgers’ throne? Based on Sunday, the answer is an overwhelming no. It will be up to Gutekunst to look at the bigger picture to determine whether Love is capable of being the Packers’ next great quarterback.

Kansas City Chiefs 13, Green Bay Packers 7

The #Packers' seven-game winning streak was snapped. Jordan Love struggled, the special teams were awful and the defense couldn't get the big stop.
Here's our early story with MVP, key stat, what it means and more.https://t.co/4LKyrTyQxL

— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) November 8, 2021