The brains of football fans should be studied for science. Maybe we should not just limit it to fans, but perhaps anyone in and around the game at all. In Sunday’s game against the New York Giants, Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love managed to get his left shoulder crushed by a defender after deciding not to slide and had to go back to the locker room temporarily. In came backup Malik Willis and, predominantly off the back of the running game, he led the Packers on the remainder of the touchdown
drive, which included both a key third down conversion on a read option keeper and a rather insane touchdown pass that involved a very impressive catch by Christian Watson.
This is good and fun and also quite important for the Packers, who ended up winning the game by seven points, but it also led to predictably stupid takes on the internet.
This particular tweet does not say explicitly say it, but you’d have to be a toddler to not follow the implication here. Of course, Sherman is committed to the “Jordan Love needs to be better” take on a professional level, so one could assume he may not be approaching the situation with the type of objectivity in takesmanship that one would like.
Still, this isn’t even about Richard Sherman. It’s not even really about the fans, some of whom will always inevitably clamor for the backup quarterback unless the starter is playing at a legitimate MVP level, and even sometimes then. No one ever sees the backup quarterback, so he could be anything. He could even be a boat!
Let’s acknowledge that Malik Willis has done an admirable job as Love’s backup going back to last season, doing everything Green Bay could ask for and more. But let’s also be serious: Jordan Love isn’t the problem. He’s the solution.
Love was almost perfect yesterday. His biggest offense was just not sliding and getting his non-throwing shoulder banged up. That didn’t slow him down at all, though. PFF gave him the highest single-game grade for his entire career at 93.6, even higher than his masterclass against Dallas in the 2023 playoffs. His stat line doesn’t look as impressive, but in case you missed the game yesterday, his wide receivers had a terrible case of the drops and it really crushed his headline numbers.
Our Dusty Evely gives Love the most minimal amount of boost here (i.e. not adding in any YAC), which I think is completely fair if you don’t have the tracking data handy. This also doesn’t include any potential future production or touchdowns from those drives — a few of those drops were on 3rd down, including a Doubs drop on the very first drive on 3rd-and-11 and a Watson drop on a deep ball on 3rd-and-2 in the third quarter. Using ANY/A, Love was at 8.42 with the actual results of the game. Sam Darnold currently leads the NFL at 8.40. If the Packers receivers just caught the balls they should have and immediately fell down, Love’s ANY/A would have shot up to 12.25, a 50% increase.
For the season, Love now sits alone at the top of the RBSDM EPA-per-dropback leaderboard, ahead of the likes of Drake Maye, Josh Allen, Sam Darnold, and Patrick Mahomes. He sits third in DAKOTA (which combines EPA and CPOE), but would lead that as well if not for his receivers blowing up his CPOE yesterday. Using Next Gen Stats’ version of EPA, Love sits third, 0.01 per play behind first-place Drake Maye. Love ranks seventh in PFF grade amongst quarterbacks, and he has the twelfth-lowest turnover-worthy play rate while having the fifth-highest big-time-throw rate. The latter is particularly impressive given how conservative the playcalling got for much of the past month. It looks like that may be changing for the better, though.
In a funny twist, this actually looks a lot like an Aaron Rodgers throw chart from the latter half of his career. Love doing this is an extremely windy game is even more impressive. If teams are going to cap the Packers offense in two-high because they don’t (and shouldn’t) respect the running game, the linebackers are going to be hard bailing to the intermediate middle to muck up the digs/crossers/short posts, and Green Bay can’t reliably create YAC in quick-game, then the only place left to push the ball is to the intermediate boundary. On Sunday, Love executed those throws to perfection. If Green Bay can continue to threaten reliably here, it’s going to force defenses to account for it, which will help open up the easier parts of the field, the parts LaFleur’s offense has traditionally geared itself toward since Love took over.
Jordan Love is absolutely holding up his end of the bargain despite having an underperforming offensive line, losing his best receiving weapon for the season, missing two of three preferred starters at wide receiver for much of the season, and having his first round pick being in-and-out of late due to injury. Whether he’s top seven, top five, or top whatever, he’s plenty good enough for the Packers to get where they want to go. It’s just up to everyone else to hold up their end.
