Packer Central

Three Reasons Why 2024 Packers Will Win Super Bowl

A season filled with high expectations is almost here. After being one of the NFL’s big surprises in 2023, here’s why the Packers are ready to win the Super Bowl.

Bill Huber

Jordan Love has the Green Bay Packers ready to win the Super Bowl.
Jordan Love has the Green Bay Packers ready to win the Super Bowl. / Tim Heitman-Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs and Detroit Lions in back-to-back games and won three straight to get into the playoffs. They smashed the Dallas Cowboys and had a chance to shock the San Francisco 49ers and advance to the NFC Championship Game.

Last year, the Packers showed Super Bowl potential. This year, they will win the Super Bowl. On the eve of the season-opening Packers-Eagles showdown, here are three reasons why the Packers will live up to the hype and bring the Lombardi Trophy back to Titletown.

1. Jordan Love

As always, every great team starts with a great quarterback. The way the rules have been slanted for the sake of TV ratings, it’s probably impossible to win a Super Bowl without a really good quarterback.

The Packers appear to have a really good one – perhaps even a great one – with Jordan Love.

During the second half of last season, Love was arguably the best quarterback in the NFL. During the final eight games, according to Stathead, he ranked:

- First with 2,150 passing yards (Dak Prescott, 2,101).

- First with seven games of 100-plus ratings (Matthew Stafford, Brock Purdy, 5).

- First with a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 18 to 1 (Tommy DeVito, 7 to 1).

- First with one interception (tied with Easton Stick and DeVito, but Love had 105 more attempts than Stick and 128 more than DeVito).

- First with a success rate of 53.8 percent (Purdy, 52.4).

- Second with a 112.7 passer rating (Purdy, 117.0).

- Third with a 70.3 percent completion rate (Derek Carr, 72.4).

That stretch of games – and that doesn’t even mention the playoff win at Dallas in which he posted the highest passer rating by a visiting quarterback in NFL postseason history – is on par with anything done by the legendary Aaron Rodgers.

“I think everybody is very hungry,” Love said. “I think the message this year is for us to just go out and start fast, not have any [need for] late-season runs. Start out fast and kind of put people on notice for what we’re going to do this year and what we’re going to be about.”

2. Playmakers Here, There, Everywhere

Of course, Love didn’t do it alone. It would have been quite a feat to throw those 18 touchdown passes all to himself.

The not-so-secret sauce to the Packers’ prolific passing game is the abundance of pass-catching threats that surround Love.

Romeo Doubs is the dynamic route-runner and dominant red-zone threat. Jayden Reed is the electric slot receiver. Christian Watson is the game-breaking threat with the elite physical tools. Dontayvion Wicks is the crisp route-runner with big-play ability. Bo Melton has elite speed. Malik Heath is the skilled “goon.”

Oh, and tight end Luke Musgrave has deep speed, tight end Tucker Kraft is a YAC machine and running back Josh Jacobs has 197 receptions in five seasons.

Good luck covering all those players. Over the course of 60 or 70 offensive snaps, Green Bay’s extensive list of playmakers will be too long to stop.

It’s one play in a preseason game but Wicks got matched against a safety for his long touchdown at Cleveland.

With Love, an abundance of weapons and excellent pass protection from Zach Tom, Rasheed Walker and Elgton Jenkins, the passing game could be the Packers’ best since the 2011 team scored what was at the time the second-most points in NFL history.

“I think what people see and what people hear is only a fraction of what us guys in the building see and participate in every single day,” Watson said. “I think that the excitement in here is even higher.

“We have expectations for us that are higher than a lot of the world probably is. We see it every day. The excitement is definitely there but we know there’s a lot of things we have to do and maintain to accomplish those things. It’s not just a given because we have the guys to do it, but the excitement is definitely there, for sure.”

3. New Defense, New Results

Is first-year Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley the right man for the job?

Who knows?

Can he put together winning game plans every week? Can he adjust to what the opposing offense is doing? Can he adjust to the offense’s adjustments? Will he make the right call at the right time?

What we do know is the players like his scheme and attacking mindset. That matters after three years of Joe Barry.

Where Hafley could make the winning difference is turnovers.

Last year, the Packers finished next-to-last in the NFL with seven interceptions. That was after grabbing 17 interceptions in 2022 and 18 in 2021. Their 18 total takeaways ranked 23rd in the NFL.

In Dom Capers’ first season as defensive coordinator in 2009, the Packers intercepted 30 passes and forced 40 turnovers. Nobody is expecting that level of dominance, but even the league-median totals of 12 interceptions and 24 takeaways could be the difference between last year’s nine wins and 11 or 12.

From that perspective, perhaps the most positive development in August was Hafley’s unit delivering takeaways by the bushel during training camp.

Hafley wasn’t the only big addition on defense.

Critically, GM Brian Gutekunst nuked the safety corps, which really was the only solution at that position considering how few plays that group made last season. Incredibly, there isn’t a single safety on this year’s roster who played a snap on defense last season. Xavier McKinney and rookies Javon Bullard and Evan Williams are infinite upgrades over Darnell Savage, Jonathan Owens and Rudy Ford.

At cornerback, Jaire Alexander is locked in and Eric Stokes is healthy. The pass rush is real.

There are questions, to be sure, but there’s a lot of areas where the Packers can be better than mediocre.

“You always got to have that confidence,” Stokes said in looking ahead to Friday night against the Eagles, “but you already know the type of test they have over there. They got some firepower and all that stuff.

“We’re trying to set a championship defense around here. We’re trying to be known as a defensive team. Whenever they think about the Packers, they think about the defense. It’s going to start Friday night. Friday night is another test to show everybody.”

More Green Bay Packers News

Three reasons for disappointment | Picking every game (and Super Bowl) | Consensus power rankings | Packers-Eagles Wednesday injury report | Stokes healthy, smiling | Another new running back | Packers-Eagles Tuesday injury report | Watson “ready to rock” | NFL.com’s Super Bowl poll | Malik Willis progress report | Coordinator changes for both teams add to intrigue | 5,000 yards for Love? | Packers-Eagles matchups 

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.