Sunday Six-Pack: Jordan Love Gets Game Ball as Packers Beat Chargers
GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers are back on the winning side of the ledger with a 23-20 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday. They won’t get to enjoy the game for long with a Thanksgiving Day showdown against the Detroit Lions looming.
Jordan Love threw for 322 yards and two touchdown passes, including a game-winner to Romeo Doubs, which earned Love our game ball and Doubs our play of the day.
Who got the lame ball? What was the turning point? Here are our weekly postgame awards.
Game Ball: Jordan Love
Jordan Love has been under siege for most of the season. Everything he does is going to be under the microscope. That's just how things are when you replace a future Hall of Fame player.
The season has been bumpy at times, which Love has admitted. However, Sunday's game was his best as a starter. The Packers had not had a 300-yard passer since Aaron Rodgers against the Chicago Bears in December 2021, a streak that spanned 31 games.
Love threw for 322 yards against the Chargers.
“Yeah, I think in the pass game that was one of our better games in my career as a starter so far, so, yeah, it definitely was,” Love said. “But it’s everybody. The receivers making plays – getting a lot of YAC on some of those drives was huge, just being able to take advantage of shots downfield, get some explosive pass plays, and guys just breaking tackles and things like that to get as many yards as possible, was huge. It takes everybody, as you can see.”
The most important part of the day was what happened when they had the ball with a chance to win the game with 5:24 remaining on the clock.
The Packers have been on the wrong end of most games like that this season.
They won the home opener against New Orleans but have lost every one-score game since.
Three of those games ended with Love throwing an interception on the game's final play of significance.
Sunday was a different story. Love and the offense were buried deep in their own territory when the drive began, and it looked like they were going nowhere fast.
A pass interference call on a deep pass to Dontayvion Wicks, however, allowed the offense to reset.
Love, Wicks and Romeo Doubs took over from there.
Love hit Wicks on a short pass in which Wicks broke two tackles and gained 35 yards. About 30 of those yards came after the catch and initial defensive contact.
Two plays later, Love took his shot. Doubs snatched the ball out of the air and gave the Packers a 23-20 lead that they would not relinquish.
Fair or not, quarterbacks are judged on whether or not their team wins.
They're judged even further by if they're able to come through when their team is trailing in the fourth quarter.
Love was excellent most of the day and threw a game-winning touchdown pass.
He gets the game ball.
Lame Ball: Jonathan Owens
Earlier this week coach Matt LaFleur said Jonathan Owens had done an unbelievable job for the team at safety.
Today, however, was not his finest hour. Owens was beaten for two touchdowns, including one in which he had Chargers receiver Stone Smartt lined up for a tackle that he ended up missing.
Owens has started the last four games with Darnell Savage on injured reserve. It would seem unlikely that Savage would return to the lineup against Detroit on a short week.
Owens is a veteran, and the Packers have to be expecting more than that from him.
He gets the dubious honor of the day.
Pivot Point: Austin Ekeler Fumble/Musgrave Miss
The Packers were leading 16-13 early in the fourth quarter when the Chargers were threatening to take a 20-16 lead.
Justin Herbert handed the ball to Austin Ekeler and all hell broke loose.
Ekeler fell down, and was able to get back up.
Once back on his feet, Kenny Clark's arm was draped around him, which forced a fumble that was recovered by Rashan Gary.
The Packers took the ball and had a chance to put together a scoring drive and cruise to victory.
It looked like they had a chance to do just that when Love rolled to his right following a play-action fake and saw Luke Musgrave streaking down the sidelines.
If Love would have hit him in stride, it's possible that Musgrave would have scored an 83-yard touchdown. He only had one man to beat. At a minimum, he would have been in scoring range by the time he was tackled.
A scoring drive would have given the Packers a two-score lead. Instead, Love missed the throw, and the Packers had to sweat it out.
Play of the Game: Romeo Doubs Saves the Day
With the Packers trailing 20-16, Dontayvion Wicks made a huge play to get the Packers inside the Chargers' 30.
Love's next pass would be his last of the day, and Romeo Doubs made sure it would count.
Doubs went up and snatched the ball away from a defender in close coverage.
"You’ve got to give Rome a ton of credit," LaFleur said. "We preach aggressive hands, and there was definitely a mentality and you could see it right there. He went and snatched that ball."
It's the type of play the Packers' offense had not made in games similar to Sunday's earlier in the year.
This time, they did, and it was the difference between winning and losing.
O-Line Rotation
Coach Matt LaFleur said earlier in the week that the left tackle position was going to be a competitive scenario moving forward.
Rasheed Walker started last week in Pittsburgh after being replaced by Yosh Njiman for the Packers' 20-3 win over the Los Angeles Rams the week prior.
Against the Chargers, the Packers went with a rotation at left tackle and right guard.
At guard, Sean Rhyan replaced Jon Runyan for a series in the second quarter. Njiman and Walker rotated series-by-series in the first half.
"It's something we went into the game with," LaFleur said. "That we were going to rotate some guys just to shake it up a little bit, bring a little more competition to it. We’ll look into that each and every week and make adjustments accordingly."
Looking Ahead: Short Week
There's no rest for the weary. On Thursday, the Packers will face the Detroit Lions, who struggled against the Chicago Bears on Sunday but improved to 8-2.
The Lions are cruising toward an NFC North Division title, while the Packers are trying to find anything to salvage this season.
Following the Lions, the Packers will return home to take on the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
With Sunday’s win, perhaps they'll have some confidence going into a building where they have not been very successful under LaFleur. The Packers have not won in Detroit since 2020.
To further that point, the Lions have won four straight against Green Bay going into Thursday's matchup.
