A couple of days after the Green Bay Packers lost at the Minnesota Vikings in Week 17, I asked a team’s top pro scout this question: If he absolutely, positively had to win a game, where would he place Jordan Love among the NFC’s seven playoff quarterbacks?
Last, he said.
In the long run, he would take Love over the Rams’ Matthew Stafford, who will turn 37 a couple days before this year’s Super Bowl. He “probably” would take Love over the Vikings’ Sam Darnold, who had just continued his breakout season with a dominating performance over the Packers. Upside as a passer might give him an edge over the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts.
But for not just any given Sunday but the upcoming Sunday, Love would be seventh out of seven.
On Saturday night, the Washington Commanders’ Jayden Daniels did what Love had failed to do a month earlier. Against the injury-plagued and shorthanded Detroit Lions defense at crazy Ford Field and against esteemed defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, Daniels did what great quarterbacks are supposed to do.
He dominated.
Daniels’ performance was reminiscent of young Aaron Rodgers leading the upstart Packers to a rout of the top-seeded Falcons on the way to the Super Bowl in 2010. Daniels was brilliant from start to finish as a 24-year-old rookie quarterback.
Youth is nothing more than excuse-making. Is the 26-year-old Love young in his career? With five seasons in the NFL and 36 starts under his belt, not really. He’s not Stafford from an experience perspective, obviously, and there are things to learn, but he’s also not Daniels.
In his 18th professional start, Daniels was 22-of-31 passing for 299 yards against the Lions. He finished with 350 total yards, threw two touchdown passes and never was close to the type of mistakes that Love made in last week’s playoff loss to the Eagles.
Talk about setting the tone: Daniels’ first-half drives resulted in a botched quarterback sneak by backup Marcus Mariota on fourth down on Detroit’s end of the field, a field goal, three consecutive touchdowns and taking a knee to run out the clock.
With the Lions trying to stage a furious comeback in the fourth quarter, Daniels led consecutive drives that produced two touchdowns and a missed field goal.
In playoff wins at Tampa Bay and Detroit, Daniels completed 69.7 percent of his passes with a passer rating of 116.2.
I say this all the time, but Green Bay is called Titletown for a reason. It’s not Wild Card City or Eleven Win Town. Super Bowls are supposed to be the expectation.
To be clear, this is not meant to crap on Love or the team’s decision to give him a $220 million contract extension based on one half of one season.
Rather, it’s the reality – an icy-cold reality that matches the weather on a sunny but stupidly cold Sunday in Green Bay.
Great quarterbacks win Super Bowls. Love is not a great quarterback. That’s not to say he can’t become a great quarterback. He’s obviously got the talent, and that red-hot finish to 2023 shows what he can do for a sustained stretch of games.
Coach Matt LaFleur likes to deflect criticism away from his quarterback. As he should. LaFleur is right that it takes all 11 players for an offense to succeed. The offensive line? Probably overrated. The receivers? Out of 32 quarterbacks with 300-plus dropbacks, Love was victimized by the fourth-highest drop rate. The coaches? They failed to take full advantage of the play-action opportunities afforded by Josh Jacobs.
“I’ve said this many times, but the QB is going to get the blame when you lose and he’s going to get the praise when you win,” LaFleur said on Tuesday. “I believe that football is the ultimate team sport, and it’s not just him.
“We’ve got to catch the ball better. We had a lot of drops. I tell our defense all the time, I’ve never seen a quarterback that can complete a pass when he’s on his back. Or very few. So, when you’re getting pressure, it’s hard to be effective (and) your numbers probably aren’t going to be very good.”
That’s all true, but when Love was playing from a clean pocket, he ranked 13th in passer rating and 23rd in completion percentage, according to Pro Football Focus. Even when turning drops into completions, Love was 19th in adjusted completion percentage.
How are you supposed to win games when you’re not completing passes?
“I think the numbers tell you one thing, but you got to watch the tape, analyze the tape and see what areas can we get better in,” LaFleur said. “One thing I did talk to him about was just the consistency of his footwork on some of these plays. I think he would be the first to tell you the same thing, because there were some instances throughout the course of the season and, specifically in this last game, where the rhythm and timing and footwork [were off].”
Knee and groin injuries during the first half of the season no doubt were a factor in those areas, where practice time – especially for a relatively inexperienced starter – are so critical.
“I think we experienced that with him this year, to be honest with you. When he wasn’t practicing, it wasn’t quite as crisp,” LaFleur said. “So, I do think back to the injury deal, that was a big deal when he wasn’t practicing.”
Maybe with health, Love will reach those heightened expectations in 2025. Maybe with a better plan to marry the run game to the pass game, Love will be better. Maybe if someone emerges as a true go-to receiver, Love will be better. Maybe after an offseason to reset and focus on the basics, Love will be better with his accuracy and decision-making.
He’ll have to be.
Maybe Daniels will regress in Year 2. Maybe Detroit’s Jared Goff is a creation of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. In Minnesota, maybe Darnold will regress or J.J. McCarthy will battle through “rookie” growing pains. In Philadelphia, maybe Hurts will never be an upper-echelon passer. In Los Angeles, maybe age will finally catch up to Stafford.
Or maybe not. The Packers can only control what they can control, and that’s their quarterback.
“This is really more for our football team and an offense as a whole, but just consistency, being able to control the game whenever we need to control the game” is the next step, said the man who drafted Love and gave him that enormous contract, general manager Brian Gutekunst.
“I think there was times we were exceptionally explosive this year, but I want to see us be able to control the game however we need to, whether that’s through the run game, the pass game. You always want to be explosive because, as Matt says, that leads to points. But, at the same, time, situational football and being more consistent as an offense is something we can be better at and I think we will.”
Love must be much better in 2025 than he was in 2024. For the Packers to be the best team in the NFL, he can’t be a middle-of-the-pack quarterback in the NFC.
“I think there’s obviously areas that I improved on, that the team improved on, and there’s some stuff I want to clean up, be better at, for sure,” Love said after the Eagles game. “That’s the nature of the game.
“It’s never going to be perfect. There’s always going to be things to get better at, improve on. That’ll definitely be part of the offseason. Just go back, watch the games, make lists of things I can improve on and be better at. But I think we did some really good things as an offense, and I think there’s a lot of stuff that we left out there that we could have done a lot better.”
