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On Nov. 1 last year, Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst met with the media. It wasn’t for a victory lap.
The Packers were 2-5. Over the previous five games they averaged 15.6 points. In Jordan Love’s first season as a starter he had a passer rating of 78.2 and a completion percentage of 57.7%, both unacceptable numbers for a regular starting QB. We know how the rest of the movie went, but on that day Love’s future with the Packers was very much in question.
“I think we’ve got 10 games left,” Gutekunst said. “It’s gonna be a very important 10 games.”
Gutekunst also said positive things about Love, such as handling adversity well and showing good flashes within games. It wasn’t a negative speech. But everyone understood the stakes for those last 10 games of the season.
It ended up being 12 games, because the Packers made the playoffs and upset the Dallas Cowboys before nearly knocking off the San Francisco 49ers. In a little more than two months, Love went from a below-average quarterback to an offseason with enough flower bouquets to fill a greenhouse. His hot streak didn’t start right after Gutekunst’s proclamation, but over the last eight games of the regular season he had 18 touchdowns, one interception and a 112.7 passer rating. Then in the playoff win over the Cowboys he had a 157.2 passer rating, barely missing on perfection.
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It’s hard to remember the last time a quarterback went from being roundly criticized to celebrated in such a short time. It’s possible that Love caught a hot streak and he’ll have a hard time replicating it. But Love was so good, it doesn’t seem like it was a mirage.
If we saw Love’s true level over the last half of the season, the Packers are set up remarkably well. The Packers were the youngest team in the NFL last season. They had a 6-2 finish to the regular season, won a playoff game at Dallas and led at San Francisco until the 49ers scored a touchdown with 1:07 remaining. Then the Packers followed that up with a solid offseason.
Green Bay’s foundation isn’t just Love, but a deep group of receivers and tight ends that are all still on rookie deals. Christian Watson just turned 25 years old and he’s the oldest of the group. None of them were a first-round pick, a testament to how well the Packers have drafted. Receivers are more valuable than ever in the NFL and the Packers have a group of four young ones (Jayden Reed, Romeo Doubs, Dontayvion Wicks and Watson) who all present problems for opposing secondaries. New running back Josh Jacobs is an interesting addition as well. He struggled a bit last season but in 2022 he led the NFL with 1,653 yards. As much credit as Love gets, a big part of the Packers’ hot streak was an effective running game led by Aaron Jones, who was cut in the offseason. The Packers obviously believe Jacobs can be even better.
The defense has a lot of talent too. Among the 11 projected starters, there are six first-round picks and four second-round picks. The Packers finally fired maligned defensive coordinator Joe Barry after last season, and perhaps under former Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley the defense can live up to its talent level.
Green Bay wasn’t expected to be very good last season after trading Aaron Rodgers. Not many teams seamlessly move on from a Hall of Fame quarterback. But the first-round pick of Love back in 2020, which was criticized for years as he sat behind Rodgers, is looking pretty good now. The rest of the roster is in really good shape, thanks to some productive drafts. Matt LaFleur, oddly dismissed for years because he happened to coach Rodgers, is getting a little more credit now for his 56-27 career record. The Packers are already onto a new era. It seems like their rebuild took about a half of a season.
Offseason grade
When the Giants didn’t put the franchise tag on safety Xavier McKinney, the Packers took advantage. They signed McKinney to a four-year, $76 million deal. He was the fourth-best safety in the NFL last season according to Pro Football Focus’ grades. The Packers also swapped running backs, signing Josh Jacobs from the Raiders while cutting Aaron Jones after Jones refused a pay cut. Jones had a great finish to last season and is a fan favorite but also has been less durable than Jacobs, who was a first-team All-Pro in 2022. Jacobs got a four-year, $48 million deal but in reality it’s a team-friendly deal that Green Bay can get out of after one year if it chooses. The Packers’ draft wasn’t overly exciting, with the team taking Arizona offensive tackle Jordan Morgan in the first round. Morgan will help a retooled line that finally moved on from David Bakhtiari this offseason. Green Bay also lost lineman Jon Runyan Jr., who started 50 games over the past three seasons, in free agency to the Giants. The Packers’ second-round pick, Edgerrin Cooper, should start at the inside linebacker spot next to 2022 first-round pick Quay Walker.
Grade: B
Quarterback report
Jordan Love seems to grasp that even though he finished last season strong and was lauded by nearly everyone over the offseason, he’s not a finished product. He has just 18 career regular-season starts. Justin Fields, for one example, has more than double that.
Love has many things he’s trying to clean up. That’s one reason he was at OTAs this offseason despite seeking a new contract extension.
“The main thing for me is understanding where to go with the ball, always making the right decision, not forcing the ball downfield and trying to fit it in certain windows, things like that,” Love said. “Just process, and understanding where I need to go with the ball, and then pocket movement, making smaller movements in the pocket, not being so quick to try and get out of there, but to stay in the pocket and try and find those receivers downfield. That’s something I’ve been working on.
“Also throwing on the move, going right, being able to get my shoulders downhill, my body downhill and not be drifting away from the throw.”
Love was fantastic by the end of last season. Tape analysts and stats nerds can agree on that. There’s no obvious reason to believe he can’t play at that level again. The self awareness to keep working on his game is a good sign though.
BetMGM odds breakdown
The Packers’ Super Bowl odds saw a big drop this offseason. Green Bay opened at 25-to-1 to win the Super Bowl at BetMGM but that has come down to 16-to-1 due to action on the Packers. The over on the Packers’ win total of 9.5 is also popular, with 82% of bets on the over as of mid-June. If you’re high on the Packers, you should be high on Jordan Love too. He’s tied for the sixth-best MVP odds at +1600. He’s also +1500 to lead the NFL in passing yards, which is intriguing considering he has the easiest opposing schedule among quarterbacks this season according to FantasyPoints.com.
Yahoo’s fantasy take
From Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski: “Much has been made of Green Bay’s historical luck at quarterback, recently transitioning from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love. But perhaps the Packers are making most of that luck. Love’s tied to a deep receiving corps — with apologies to the Steelers, the Packers probably mine the draft for pass-catchers better than anyone — and a brilliant play designer in Matt LaFleur. And Love certainly looked like a superstar in the second half of 2023, posting 18 touchdowns and a 112.7 rating against just one interception over his final eight starts.
“The quarterback position is uncommonly deep for 2024, which makes it easy on managers. You can draft a strong candidate in so many pockets. But as long as the Yahoo market is going to allow me to take Love as the QB10, he’s going to be one of my preferred targets.”
Stat to remember
The Packers don’t just have a young foundation. They were historically young last season.
The Packers were the youngest team, based on weighted age (which takes into consideration how many games each player appeared in) to win a playoff game since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, according to AP. Only three other playoff teams since the merger, and none since 1974, had a lower weighted age than Green Bay’s 25.58 years. This offseason the Packers were the only team in the NFL at the start of OTAs with just one player past the age of 30 (defensive end Preston Smith), SI.com said. Every other team had at least four.
When put in that perspective, it made sense that a very young team started last season 2-5 and then got hot as it improved and gained confidence.
“Sometimes youth can be a benefit,” Gutekunst said before last season, according to Spectrum News. “It’s a young man’s game and you need the legs, you need the speed. Certainly, there’s an experience factor these guys are going to have to go through. For me, the expectation is to go out and try to win every game that we play.”
Burning question
Can the defense have a huge improvement?
The Packers’ defense got better as last season went on but it wasn’t good. They ranked 27th in defensive DVOA. While much of the blame fell on coordinator Joe Barry, who somehow survived the heat after a bumpy 2022 season but had similar results in 2023, it’s possible Green Bay simply isn’t that good on defense despite some highly drafted players. We should find out quickly because the scheme will be much different.
It’s not often that a FBS head coach leaves for an NFL coordinator job, but Jeff Hafley did that when he left Boston College. The Packers will switch to a 4-3 after running a 3-4 scheme since 2009. It’s also expected to be a much more aggressive scheme than Barry ran, though every new defensive coordinator promises a more aggressive approach. Head coach Matt LaFleur seemed to echo that when he said he wants the new defense “to be fast and physical and attack the ball. We will be a little bit more vision-based on the backend and I think that’s [a] great opportunity to be able to go out there and generate takeaways.” If the Packers’ talent takes to the scheme quickly, the defense could be better than it has been in years. Or maybe the past results indicate that all of Green Bay’s highly drafted defensive players were a big part of the problem too.
Best case scenario
It seems like a bit much to believe the Packers can be a Super Bowl team, but last season they were pretty close. Green Bay was less than two minutes from knocking off the 49ers and advancing to the NFC championship game against the Lions. The Packers won at Detroit last Thanksgiving, and it’s possible they could have done so again with a Super Bowl berth on the line. When a young team like the Packers finishes as well as it did last season, it’s reasonable to guess that improvement is coming. And the Packers were already pretty good by the end of last season. The key could be the defense. If switching coordinators has the effect that Packers fans have been shouting about for a couple years, there should be confidence that the offense will do its part. Would it be that surprising if Jordan Love is in the MVP conversation this season? If Love can repeat his second half of last season, but over a full season this time, he’ll be in the mix. It will be hard for defenses to defend the Packers’ plethora of dangerous receiving threats while also keeping an eye on talented running back Josh Jacobs. The Lions are the favorites to win the division and rightfully so, but the Packers might be closer to them than we think. And if the Packers are good enough to win what might be the NFL’s toughest division, they can make a deep playoff run too.
Nightmare scenario
Last season Jordan Love and the Packers played a mediocre Raiders team on Monday night in Week 5, and Love was awful. He completed 16-of-30 passes for 182 yards, no touchdowns and three interceptions in an ugly 17-13 loss. It was good for a 32.2 passer rating. That game, and a few others early in the season when Love looked lost, weren’t that long ago. Love looked great in the second half of last season, but we have seen some quarterbacks get red hot for a half season and not repeat it. The positive perception of Love is based on a very small sample. The conversation surrounding him wouldn’t be as glowing if the Packers didn’t make the playoffs and Love didn’t carve up the Cowboys in the wild-card round. The Packers were just 9-8 last season and wouldn’t have made the playoffs if Seattle wasn’t upset at home by the Steelers late in the season, among other results. While you wouldn’t bet on Love’s strong finish being a fluke, it can’t be ruled out either. If Love takes a step back, the Packers will probably be a losing team. Even if Love is good again, it’s possible a new-look defense isn’t any better and holds the Packers back. More importantly, if Love regresses we’ll have to reassess the notion that the Packers have stumbled into another decade of great quarterback play.
The crystal ball says …
The Packers are an exciting team. It can be incorrect to extrapolate what we saw most recently to a new season, but the fact that Green Bay was playing so well with a young roster at the end of last season gives a lot of hope for the present and the future too. While it’s fair to be a little skeptical on Jordan Love after his tale of two half-seasons, the tape says that he’s not going anywhere for a while. It would be surprising if he’s not a viable starter for a long time. The Lions are still the class of the division, the Bears are coming on fast, but the Packers should make it back to the playoffs with Love being among the league leaders in passing yards. And like last season, nobody is going to be happy to host the Packers for a postseason game.
