The Green Bay Packers do not need to win Saturday night’s divisional round matchup with the San Francisco 49ers to shock the NFL world. They have already done that. When Green Bay traded four-time NFL MVP and future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets this past offseason, no one gave them a real shot at being competitive.
2020 first round pick Jordan Love spent three years learning from Rodgers, but his lone start (in 2021 on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs when Rodgers had COVID) did not give many much hope that the Packers’ run of stellar quarterback play would continue. For the first part of the 2023 season, the doubters appeared to be right.
After starting the season 2-5 with 11 touchdowns and eight interceptions, Love led the Packers to seven wins in their final ten games while putting up 21 more touchdown passes and just three interceptions.
Love’s ascension in the latter part of the season coincided with the the improvement of the Packers’ young group of pass catchers as well as the offense getting more and more healthy as the regular season drew to an end. Offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, however, believes that the 2023 team is playing better than last year’s Rodgers-led team for one important reason.
Adam Stenavich Says the Green Bay Packers Offense Communicates Better with Jordan Love than Aaron Rodgers
When speaking to the media today, Stenavich was asked about how different the offense runs under Love, who runs the plays that are called, as opposed to Rodgers who frequently went off script. He responded:
“There is definitely value to that. Because half the time, when you are done with the drive, sometimes in past years you’d just be trying to figure out what play was called. So now we know what was supposed to happen.
“But with Aaron he would see stuff and make checks and all that, that you didn’t know exactly what was happening at the time. But with this, yeah, we’re on the same page and going.
“Not to say that way wasn’t good because we had results with it, but this is nice because you can kind build on offense around it, build plays off plays. As the game progressed, hey, we did this, now we’re going to do this, now we’re going to do this.
“I think our communication on the sideline has been better just from that aspect of being able to, as the game progresses, have plays off of plays and things like that. Yeah, that’s a huge advantage this year.
It should be noted that Stenavich did say that the Packers’ offense was not bad under Rodgers’ leadership. Instead, he said that the team is communicating better.
This is something that Hall of Fame safety LeRoy Butler noted on NFL Network earlier this week. Even San Francisco 49ers edge rusher Nick Bosa can see how much more cohesive the Packers’ offense is:
“The Packers have a quarterback who does exactly what he’s coached to do. Aaron Rodgers is a Hall of Famer and unbelievable but he kind of went outside of the realm of coaching & sometimes it’s good when you have a guy who does what he’s coached to do.”
Will the improved communication and selflessness of the offense be enough to take down the NFC’s top seed? The NFL will find out on Saturday.
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