For a large portion of the last three games, Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers offense have been going backwards. However, it’s not as if conditions around the first-time starting quarterback have been all that good either.
Since the New Orleans game, which includes an impressive fourth-quarter comeback, Love has completed just 55.5 percent of his 110 pass attempts. He is averaging only 6.2 yards per attempt, which over that span ranks 28th, and he’s thrown two touchdowns to six interceptions.
As a unit, the Packers are averaging just 17 points per game over the last three weeks and have been held to a total of six points over the three combined first halves of play.
Yes, Love has to be better at the end of the day. Specifically with his accuracy and, as of late, his decision-making. But with that said, everything going on around him has been chaotic, to say the least, making his job all the more difficult.
The offense, in particular, has been hit with injuries. There has been only one game where Green Bay had both Christian Watson and Aaron Jones on the field together, and both were on a snap count. The offensive line has been without David Bakhtiari since Week 1, and Elgton Jenkins missed roughly 2.5 games–not to mention that Zach Tom and Jon Runyan have been banged up as well.
There has not been a run game for Love and the offense to lean on. Currently, the Packers rank 25th, averaging just 3.5 yards per rush, a figure that Love has helped inflate with some scrambles of his own. Without a reliable run game, Love is facing a steady dose of second and third-and-long situations where the defense has the advantage, knowing he’s going to pass the ball. In those situations, the pass rush can pin its ears back, and from the offense’s perspective, there are only so many routes that can be ran when seven-plus yards are needed.
The offensive line in pass protection in the last two games has struggled as well. Love was pressured on nearly 50 percent of his dropbacks against Detroit and on over one-third of them against Las Vegas. After facing little pressure the first three games, his internal clock, in terms of how much time he has in the pocket, has had to adjust on the fly. Love has gone from often having all the time he needs to sometimes not even being able to make it to his second progression, impacting his decision-making, which can lead to more forced throws. When pressure gets home quickly, it doesn’t really matter what the play call is at that point.
In the passing game, the Packers are feeling the side effects of relying heavily on a young group of pass-catchers. Routes aren’t being run as precisely as they need to be, which throws off where Love expects the pass catchers to be and the timing of it all as well. The young receivers are struggling to fight through physical coverage, throwing off the entire route, and they also are having issues with contested catches.
You add all of that together, and while there are areas in which Matt LaFleur can help his offense out as the play-caller, specifically by simplifying things, there is also only so much that he can do when routine details are being missed, and the execution isn’t consistent. Without a consistent downfield presence or an effective run game, there really is nothing for defenses to fear. This then allows them to shrink the field and muddy things up over the middle and on short to intermediate routes, limiting, to a degree, what LaFleur can dial up as a play caller.
Overall, there is a lack of execution on offense. At times, that’s on coaching and the position the players are being put in, which, in part, comes with the territory with such a young team. It’s also the lack attention to detail by those on the field, which results in many of the issues already highlighted in this article. Everyone has to perform better.
“I think it all starts with the detail,” said LaFleur following the Raiders game. “We had a really long team meeting today (Tuesday) and laid out everything for our guys, areas where we have plays dialed up against the premier looks that’s exactly what you want them for and we are getting the bare minimum, and sometimes not even getting a positive play at all. There are other times you’ve got to give credit to the Raiders where we’ve got plays dialed up that are horrible looks and you’re like, how can you take a bad play and not make it worse.
“I think a lot of it comes down to our detail. Where are we putting our eyes? What are we doing? Are we using the correct technique? I think a lot of our inability to be successful offensively is we’ve had negative plays, or we’ve had a penalty, we’ve been in these get-back-on-track situations and we’ve had a hard time recovering from that.”
Of course, the Packers want to win games, but the ultimate goal for 2023 is to figure out whether or not Love can be their quarterback in 2024 and beyond. That evaluation becomes more difficult when everything around him is not going well. However, to an extent, the Packers knew that was going to be part of the equation, given their heavy reliance on young players at receiver and tight end–although I’m guessing they thought there would be more help from the offensive line and the run game.
The worst outcome for the Packers following this season is that they aren’t completely sure on what they have in Love. Whether it’s extending Love and building around him or hitting the reset button, what Green Bay needs is a path. The teams who sit in that middle ground are the ones who can feel the most stuck.
Love has shown high-end flashes here and there, but what he and the offense are in search of is consistency. Unfortunately, that may elude the Packers until – or if – things around Love stabilize. That’s just the reality of the situation when relying on a first-time starting quarterback. Conditions are never going to be perfect, but right now the Packers don’t have anything offensively to hang their hats on.
