It is a new era of Green Bay Packers football. For the first time in 30 years, the team will enter the NFL regular season without a quarterback named Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers. The latter, of course, was traded to the New York Jets ahead of the 2023 NFL Draft for a myriad of reasons.
Aside from the damaged relationship between the four-time MVP and the organization, the Packers were (and still are) confident that Jordan Love can lead their team to contention. As most fans can surmise, it was Love’s performance against the Philadelphia Eagles that convinced Green Bay that he was ready.
However, not everyone knows just how big of a deal Love’s performance was, especially to Matt LaFleur and the coaching staff.
Jordan Love Showed Complete Trust in the Green Bay Packers Coaching Staff
Everyone saw it happen. Rodgers exited the game with a rib injury and the Packers trailing. While the game was out of hand at that point, Love came in and completed six of nine passes for 113 yards and a touchdown.
What everyone did not see happen was the amount of trust Love displayed towards the coaching staff. Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated detailed the moment in that game Coach LaFleur knew Love would be his quarterback in 2023:
And while the Eagles were driving the field, it stuck with LaFleur that he had a call that’d perfectly exploit a loose quarters coverage Philly had been running. The problem? Where it ranked on Love’s list of calls was in, as LaFleur recalls it, Do Not Call This If I Go In territory.
“But I kept seeing the look for it,” LaFleur says.
So after Love started the next series with a 15-yard throw to Watson and a first-down incompletion, the coach spit into the headset, Hey, do you trust me? Can I call this?
The high-low concept worked as LaFleur thought it would. An underneath receiver ran a pivot route (when a receiver breaks sharply over the middle, stops, and cuts back toward the sideline), which put the defender in conflict as Allen Lazard wrapped behind him, and Love delivered a strike to Lazard for a 17-yard gain. From there the Packers kicked a field goal, an onside kick to get the ball back failed and Green Bay lost by a touchdown, 40–33.
But the game, and the moment, would reverberate at Lambeau Field well past Thanksgiving. In fact, in January and February, when Green Bay was mapping out its offseason, and considering the chances that Aaron Rodgers wouldn’t be back, it’d be something coaches and execs could point back to—and feel convinced on, as concerns over whether Love would make it harbored after the quarterback’s second year slowly evaporated in Year 3.
It was not the 63-yard touchdown pass to Christian Watson. It was a 17-yard pass to Allen Lazard that otherwise would not have been noticed as anything significant. But it was.
Love showed complete trust in his coach and it paid off. Rodgers, on the other hand, limited the plays LaFleur could call and oftentimes did his own thing on offense. Whether or not it was his own hubris, the Packers were done.
The 2023 offseason was a pivotal one. The biggest decision, of course, was what to do with Aaron Rodgers should he decide he wants to return. And if he did return, what to do with Love who is entering his fourth NFL season?
Well, we all know what happened, but Breer found out a little more about why it happened. Love follows the playbook. He trusts LaFleur to call the right plays.
Love already said recently that he does not anticipate changing plays much at the line of scrimmage. When asked why, he said “I trust Matt.”
Only time will tell if Love will be the next great Packers quarterback. But for now, he’s the quarterback Green Bay needs: one that listens to his coach and cares about the development of the young pass catchers.
Welcome to the Jordan Love era.
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