Not even Mark Murphy, the Green Bay Packers’ President and CEO, knows what the franchise has in Jordan Love.
“It wouldn’t be fair to judge Jordan now since there are so many other factors that have contributed to the offenses’s poor performance,” Murphy wrote in his monthly Murphy Takes 5 column on Packers.com.
Some of the back-breaking miscues — Murphy names dropped passes, penalties and mental errors among the most significant factors — paint a murky picture.
After just seven starts, it may be too soon to formulate widespread generalizations about what he is and what he could become. However, after seven starts in 2008, the Packers were ready to declare Aaron Rodgers as their long-term starting quarterback.
The then-24-year-old Rodgers signed a contract extension on Halloween during the team’s bye week. The Packers were sitting one game above .500 and Rodgers was completing his passes at a rate of 65.6% with 15 total touchdowns and four interceptions, according to Pro Football Reference. It was the team’s first glimpse at him under center in a full-time capacity after riding the bench for the first three years of his career behind Brett Favre.
The parallels with Love, 24, only go so far. He was glued to the bench for three seasons like Rodgers, sure, but under his watch, the 2023 campaign has been ghastly. The Packers have remarkably stumbled into a 2-5 record, although they’ve performed like a squad that should remain winless. Love has completed just south of 58% of his passes for 13 total touchdowns with eight interceptions; he’s thrown at least one interception in each of his last five games.
His performance has been on a downward spiral after such an encouraging start to his first season at the helm. Love tossed three touchdowns without an interception in each of the Packers’ first two games, becoming just the fourth quarterback to ever accomplish that feat in two of his first three career starts alongside Case Keenum, Patrick Mahomes and Kurt Warner.
Per the Packers’ dope sheet, Jordan Love is the fourth quarterback ever to throw for at least three touchdowns with no interceptions in two of his first three career starts. He joins Patrick Mahomes, Kurt Warner and Case Keenum in that department.
“As a person, Jordan is everything you would want in a player — hard worker, smart, humble, a leader who is respected by his teammates. He’s also willing to take the blame when things don’t go well,” wrote Murphy. “His play has been up and down, though. Young players often take time to find consistency, but we still very much believe in Jordan and are excited to see his continued development.”
The Packers equipped Love with the youngest offense — hell, the youngest roster in the league. To this point, amid a flurry of the exact errors Murphy alluded to, it’s backfired on both him and general manager Brian Gutekunst. They allowed Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb — a pair of veteran wideouts — to walk in unrestricted free agency, making the second-year trio of Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs and Samori Toure the most experienced players in the room. Jayden Reed, a second-round rookie, has arguably been the best of the bunch this season.
Both of last year’s starting tight ends, Robert Tonyan and Marcedes Lewis, followed a similar route and now play elsewhere — they were replaced by Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft.
“ In 2008, after eight games we had seen enough of Aaron Rodgers to sign him to a contract extension,” Murphy wrote. “Aaron was in a much different situation, though, as we had good veteran receivers in Donald Driver and Greg Jennings, a quality left tackle in Chad Clifton and a good running game with Ryan Grant.
“Jordan, meanwhile, is facing a much different situation with young receivers and tight ends, no David Bakhtiari and a struggling run game.”
The Packers’ offensive line has been miserable in their attempts at paving the way in the running game. Only four teams have rushed for fewer yards this season than the Packers and only six are averaging fewer rushing yards per game, according to ESPN. Aaron Jones has been in and out of the lineup for much of the year with a hamstring injury he sustained in the Packers’ season-opening throttling of the Chicago Bears on September 10.
Since then, AJ Dillon has made an effort to spearhead the rushing attack, but it hasn’t gotten him very far nor has it reaped the rewards the Packers were likely hoping for after spending a second-round pick on him in 2020. He’s averaged more than four yards per carry in a game just once this season and he’s found the end zone just once.
However, in the last three weeks, the aggression with which he runs — or the way you’d expect a 247-pound tailback to run — has been noticeably improved. He tallied 171 yards from scrimmage and a touchdown against the Las Vegas Raiders and Denver Broncos. Last week, albeit amid a poor rushing output against the Minnesota Vikings, Dillon made up for it by hauling in five passes from Love for 41 yards.
As the ground game excels, it’d be fair to expect aspects of Love’s play to improve. If not, though, then the Packers have a problem on their hands. Speaking of hands — it’d be helpful if some of the team’s blossoming pass-catchers could catch the ball and if Love would be able to connect with them at a more consistent rate. That would presumably make Murphy’s evaluation a little smoother.
When throwing beyond at least 20 yards downfield, Love ranks near the bottom of the league. According to Pro Football Focus, he’s completed just nine of such passes despite 35 attempts — the third-most in the league behind Derek Carr and Jalen Hurts — while netting just one touchdown and four interceptions. It’s the single area where Love is lacking the most that must improve over what Gutekunst calls an “important” final 10 games.
“He’s done a lot of really good things,” he said on Wednesday, November 1. “I really like how he’s responded to adversity, how he’s led the team. We have to be better as a unit and I expect that to happen over the next 10 games. We’re going through some things we knew we would go through. We haven’t had the results that we want, but I do like how the guys are responding to things.”
Inaccuracy be damned, Murphy and co. are committed to Love through the end of the season at the very least. With what could become a top-five draft pick and a handful of talented quarterback prospects set to be available this spring, the Packers could very well divert their attention elsewhere.
For now, it’s Love’s team — and there’s no doubt about it.
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Packers’ President: ‘It Wouldn’t be Fair’ to Judge Jordan Love Yet