Will the real Jordan Love please stand up?

There are those NFL teams who struggle for decades to find their franchise quarterbacks.

And then there are the Green Bay Packers.

From the time they traded a first-round pick to the Atlanta Falcons for Brett Favre on Feb. 11, 1992, and Favre became the team’s first actual team-defining quarterback since Bart Starr, the Packers’ quarterback transitions have been… well, dramatic in a personal sense, but seamless on the field. They selected Cal’s Aaron Rodgers with the 24th pick in the 2005 draft, sat Rodgers behind Favre for three years, and then began the succession plan, and Favre began the plot that would see him retiring and un-retiring more often than The Who.

Rodgers became perhaps the greatest thrower of the football the game has ever seen, but that didn’t stop the team from selecting Utah State’s Jordan Love with the 26th pick in the 2021 draft — and trading up to do it. That put Rodgers on his own “What about me?” path, and ended with Rodgers being traded to the Jets (as Favre had been years before) on Apr. 26, 2023, and advancing his own personal dramas.

Now it’s Love’s show, and while there were some rocky moments at the start of the 2023 season — his one-touchdown, five-interception stretch against the Detroit Lions and the Las Vegas Raiders was particularly disconcerting — the third-year man eventually put it all together more definitively than even the most optimistic Packers fan could have hoped.

Love’s transformation was real, and it was spectacular. In the first half of the 2023 season, Love completed 155 of 260 passes (59%) for 1,720 yards (6.6 yards per attempt), 12 touchdowns, eight interceptions, and a passer rating of 81.9.

From Week 10 through the Packers’ Divisional Round loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Love completed 254 of 374 passes (67.9%), 2,904 yards (7.8 YPA), 25 touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 107.7.

The Packers rose up from 12th in FTN’s Passing DVOA in the first half of the season (Weeks 1-9) to second in the second half of the season, behind only the aforementioned 49ers.

In the building, there’s little doubt that the Jordan Love we all saw in the second half of the season is the Jordan Love we can expect from now on.

“The thing that’s always stood out to me about him is he just doesn’t waver in his commitment, his work ethic,” Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said in March at the 2024 owners’ meetings. “I think there was a certain level of confidence, not just with Jordan, but with our entire football team as we went through the second half of the season that got them excited. But the work ethic, the way he goes about his business — that doesn’t seem to waver, and that’s a good sign for the future.”

At publication time, Love and the Packers are working through what his second NFL contract will look like, and what that will mean for the team’s future. Right now, it seems that the Packers have hit it big once again on the game’s most important position, and in a way that other franchises must just observe in envious wonder.

So, the question remains: Which Jordan Love from last season is the one we’ll see in 2024 and beyond?

A rough beginning under pressure led to better results.

Love was not a consistent passer early in the 2023 season. He had a tendency to drift in the pocket when he didn’t have to, he was at times careless with the synchronization of his upper and lower body, and he made throws (especially deep throws) that had you wondering what he was seeing out there.

Those flaws showed up early in the season most drastically under pressure, and Love’s eventual solutions for those problems made him an entirely different quarterback under duress in the second half of the season.

From Weeks 1-9, when pressured, Love completed 26 of 60 passes (43.3%) for 329 yards (5.5 YPA), two touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 51.3 — fourth-worst in the league, behind Daniel Jones, Bryce Young, and Mac Jones — not at all where you want your quarterback to be.

Then, from Week 10 on, Love completed 59 of 109 passes under pressure (54.1%) for 901 yards (8.3 YPA), nine touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 101.5 — the best in the NFL. LaFleur’s schematic lifts helped Love, but this was really more about how Love conducted himself as a quarterback when things fell apart.

It made all the difference. Now, Love was the right kind of quarterback under pressure, and that seems sustainable.

Motion created commotion

As Packers head coach Matt LaFleur is a student of both the Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay schools — he worked with Shanahan in Houston, Washington, and Atlanta, and with McVay in Washington and Los Angeles – it should surprise nobody that pre-snap motion is a big part of LaFleur’s offensive concepts. Last season, the Packers ranked ninth in dropbacks with pre-snap motion with 380 (the Kansas City Chiefs led the league with 574), and only the 49ers, Miami Dolphins, and Los Angeles Rams had more rushing attempts with motion than Green Bay’s 375.

In Weeks 1-9, with pre-snap motion, Love completed 81 of 126 passes for 805 yards, 306 air yards, nine touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 96.2 – the 12th-highest passer rating among quarterbacks with at least 100 attempts with pre-snap motion.

In Week 10 through the Divisional Round, it was a different story for Love: 160 of 224 for 1,853 yards, 930 air yards, a league-high 17 touchdowns, one interception, and a league-high passer rating of 119.5.

Love was a better quarterback down the stretch on his own, but LaFleur’s motion concepts were also just diabolical. This was about more than just giving his quarterback man/zone coverage indicators; the Packers dialed up motion-beaters for every type of coverage.

This 27-yard pass to Jayden Reed with 8:42 left in the second quarter of the Divisional Round game against the 49ers that ended Green Bay’s season was nonetheless a perfect example of how Love benefited from his coach’s evil genius.

San Francisco was in Cover-3, with safety Logan Ryan dropping down from a two-high look, and Tashaun Gipson staying up top. Receiver Bo Melton motioned from a Twins left look with Reed to an alignment closer to the formation, and Melton then worked across the backfield, showing a sweep look to a quick outlet opening. Tight end Luke Musgrave took the top off with his vertical route, and linebacker Dre Greenlaw’s need to scope Melton in the flat left Reed wide open over the middle on his 15-yard crosser. The concept worked so well, Love would have had an easy opening to either Reed on the crosser, or Melton in the flat.

The Packers also love to motion to trips, where they’ll send two receivers up top to clear out the coverage, and the third receiver running an intermediate out-cut. Depending on the coverage, Love can either hit the intermediate guy, or take it further downfield. In this case against the Dallas Cowboys in the Wild Card round, Dallas was in Cover-3. Reed (who motioned across) and Melton ran the verts, which left a matchup between receiver Romeo Doubs and Cowboys linebacker Damone Clark… which wasn’t much of a matchup at all.

Play-action was another schematic must

You’ll notice that both of these plays also featured under-center play-action, which points to another area of Love’s development. Younger quarterbacks who struggle to see the field tend to shy away from under-center play-action, because to execute the fake, they have to turn their backs to the defense — and in today’s NFL, the coverage before and after you whip back around can be completely different.

In Weeks 1-9, Love completed 43 of 63 passes with play-action for 466 yards, 150 air yards, five touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 96.4.

Week 10 through the end of the season? Love completed 81 of 108 passes for 1,053 yards, 537 air yards, seven touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 126.8. Only Lamar Jackson (nine) had more touchdowns in that span in play-action; only Jared Goff (115, 82, and 1,092) had more attempts, completions, and passing yards than Love; only Joe Flacco (546, go figure) had more air yards, and only Derek Carr and C.J. Stroud had higher passer ratings in that time.

Love’s under-center play-action game also improved; his passer rating on such throws jumped from 97.6 in Weeks 1-9 to 130.1 in the second half.

In every way possible, Jordan Love was one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks in the second half of his first full season as an NFL starter. That has a lot of value. It has even more value if it stands up to the forward years. Love’s alignment with his coaches’ preferred concepts, and his maturation both in and out of those concepts, point to this being more than just a one-off couple of months.

Will the real Jordan Love please stand up?

“He had a hell of a year,” LaFleur said of Love at his season-ending press conference. “Let’s not look past that. He really did. Just to see the growth… The results speak for themselves, but the growth of him as just the commander out there. He’s an extension of us, and I thought the ownership that he showed, the leadership that he showed, was a great sign for us.”

Well, “extension” is an interesting word. As the Packers and Love continue to circle around the obvious contract questions, the subject du jour is: Which Jordan Love are the Packers about to extend? The one they developed over 2 ½ years, or the guy who truly broke out over that second half of the season? The interception to 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw with 52 seconds left in the 24-21 Divisional playoff loss was a heartbreaker, and an unfortunate regression to Love’s previous YOLO tendencies.

But just about everything else told the Packers that they have their guy, and that it’s time to transact. After all, when you have this kind of good fortune with franchise quarterbacks, why test the Football Gods?

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise indicated).