There’s a very real argument to be made that Jordan Love is the best quarterback in the NFC North right now. This is an absolutely wild statement considering he was the uneven, often sloppy and unreliable engine behind a 3-6 team just three weeks ago.
Love’s improvement has been rapid and stunning. A 2-1 start that suggested competence and room to grow was quickly dashed behind a 1-5 stretch. Green Bay was 3-6 and had a nine percent chance of making the playoffs, per the New York Times. Since then he’s overseen wins over the Los Angeles Chargers (decent), Detroit Lions (solid) and Kansas City Chiefs (hot damn). The Packers are 6-6 and currently holding down the NFC’s final Wild Card spot.
But “overseen” doesn’t really sell what Love’s been up to lately. Turns out, he’s been one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.
Jordan Love had a career-high 87.9 passing grade last week… and topped it last night
– 90.6 passing grade, 4 big time throws, 0 turnover worthy plays
Passes 10+ yards downfield:
– 6/12, 127 yards, 2 TDs, 1 drop
Last two weeks:
– 7.9 yards per attempt
– 6 BTTs, 0 TWPs— Brad Spielberger, Esq. (@PFF_Brad) December 4, 2023
Love is peaking in every traditional statistical category after his early season slump. He’s completed nearly 70 percent of his passes while tossing eight touchdowns without an interception in Green Bay’s three game winning streak.
Part of this newfound explosiveness and efficiency is thanks to improved protection — his sacks per game is down from 2.7 to 1.7 — but there’s no doubt he’s seeing the field better and delivering the ball through tight windows in a way he’d failed previously. This isn’t the kind of throw Love was making in the first half of 2023, yet here he was torching the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving.
.@JaydenReed5 with a TD on the opening drive!#GBvsDET | #GoPackGo
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/3KeWUG3qbR
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) November 23, 2023
Love’s more complete overall game is more apparent when you break down his advanced stats. He’s dialed back his average throw distance, trading deep throw quantity for quality. As a result, his expected points added (EPA) per play have painted him as a top five quarterback. Unlike early in the season when a dire completion percentage over expected (CPOE) suggested he was missing too many makeable throws and bound to careen back to earth (see Weeks 4-10), his recent rise has been accompanied by a top five CPOE that shows he’s going above and beyond to create plays.
Of course, that hasn’t happened in a vacuum.
The Packers are getting a wide range of steady production from an overlooked receiving corps
While much has been made of the fact Love’s doing this with the youngest receiving corps in league history, it bears mentioning that his budding wideout and tight end units are emerging alongside him to create the rising tide that’s pushed the Packers into the playoff race. Christian Watson has come back online after a slow start, emerging as a vital deep threat and, importantly, scoring a ton of points (four touchdowns his last three games).
Romeo Doubs is his most targeted wideout and quickly becoming a reliable every down receiver. His 2.7 percent drop rate is the team’s lowest among all players with more than 15 targets. Love’s trust in him was on full display Sunday night.
.@RomeoDoubs hauls it in‼️#KCvsGB | #GoPackGo
📺: NBC pic.twitter.com/4uP9D7LMk8
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) December 4, 2023
Rookie Dontayvion Wicks is only playing between 30 to 40 percent of the team’s offensive snaps on a good week but has 21 targets his last five games. He’s turned that into 262 receiving yards — 17.4 per reception — because he’s got a top six yards after contact average when it comes to running after the catch. Fellow first year player Jayden Reed has emerged as a multi-tool Matt LaFleur can unleash in a myriad of ways to utterly frustrate opposing defenses. Here’s his route tree from a five-target, five-catch, 84-yard day vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers:
Add in solid early returns from rookie tight ends Luke Musgrave (consistently able to find gaps in the defense and wide open entirely too often) and Tucker Kraft (runs like a hyperactive moose on the first snow of winter) and you’ve got an emerging core that’s been vital to Love’s growth. He wouldn’t be in this position without a bunch of lesser-known cast members who make him better. But sometimes Love is thriving because he’s throwing absolute darts and putting laser beams in spots where only his guys can get it.
ANOTHER ONE FOR @ChristianW2017!
TOUCHDOWN! 🙌 #KCvsGB | #GoPackGo
📺: NBC pic.twitter.com/3MUEvPMWoo
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) December 4, 2023
What's sparked these big improvements?
The most obvious difference is Love has fine tuned his downfield throws. While he was able to hit wide open targets early in the season, he struggled on passing downs where his top wideouts only had modest separation. That, coupled with a litany of third-and-long situations thanks to the middling efficiency of the Packers’ run game — AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones are averaging only 3.6 yards per carry but have a success rate of 54 percent between them — meant long droughts.
In that midseason four-game losing streak, Green Bay converted only 18 of 51 third downs (35.3 percent, which would be 26th-best in the NFL). In this recent three-game win streak, Love has converted 17 of his 35 third downs — 48.6 percent, which would rank second.
As a result, his Packers are in the thick of the playoff race and the first-year starter has put himself on a tier where his closest comparisons are Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa and, huh no way, Jake Browning.
This is all wonderful for the Packers and terrible for the rest of the NFC North, which is at risk once again of having a playoff berth perennially reserved by that one team from a city of 100,000. Love’s 2-1 start was backed by unsustainable numbers that suggested a crash. That came in Weeks 4-10, but a 1-5 record set the stage for what’s been a gorgeous rebirth. The first-year starter isn’t Aaron Rodgers by any stretch, but he’s beginning to put together the kind of big throws that made his predecessor so maddening to face.
His last three weeks have shown he can excel in Matt LaFleur’s “I’ll get guys open, you scan the field quickly and fling it wherever” gameplan. Look at his throw chart vs. the Kansas City Chiefs and try to find a pattern. Maybe you stop him by forcing him to throw over the middle? Uncork more deep throws to the right? But mostly you’re in trouble because he can create big chunks of yardage pretty much anywhere.
Now the trick is turning this trend into a reality. If this is the Jordan Love we’re getting from here on out, well, my condolences to the Chicago Bears.
