January 12, 2025, was not a great day for Packers fans. The offense, which ranked fifth in yards per game and eighth in points per game during the regular season, sputtered to a stop against a dominant Eagles defense that would go on to win the Super Bowl. Their season was over; their quarterback threw three interceptions with an abysmally low passer rating of 41.5, and their hopes, built over the year after a stretch of electric performances by their offense, were crushed. But a new season is right around the corner, and with it comes renewed optimism and hope.
Jordan Love’s Hot Streak Was No Fluke. But There’s A Catch
The biggest hope that Packers fans have (besides winning a championship) is that we see Jordan Love play more like the Jordan Love we saw from Weeks 11-15 than what we saw in the postseason. During that five-week stretch between Week 11 and 15, Love had a passer rating of 117 and had an 8:1 TD to INT ratio.
Week 11 was right after the team’s bye week and marked a dramatic shift in playstyle. Before the bye week, Love threw over 30 passes in five of his seven games (he didn’t play in weeks 2 or 3 due to injury). After the bye week, Love didn’t throw over 30 passes in any of the remaining eight games of the regular season. This helped him raise his passer rating (five games over a 100 rating compared to just one game over 100 pre-bye week) and his completion percentage (five games with 60% or better after the bye compared to just three games prior to the bye).
His interception also dropped precipitously, with him only throwing one in the entirety of the eight games after the bye, compared to the ten he threw in the seven games he played before the bye. It was a miraculous turnaround for Love, who was playing the best football of his career up to that point, but it all fell apart in the playoffs when the Eagles took an early lead and forced the Packers to rely more on their passing attack. Love was forced to throw over 30 passes for the first time since Week 9, and it didn’t go well, as we covered at the beginning of the article. His three interceptions were the first he had thrown since week 11!
The Blueprint For Love’s Success Starts On The Ground
If we learned anything from last year, it is that Jordan Love clearly needs a strong running game to anchor the offense and take pressure off himself. The Packers must use a robust running game to build a modest passing offense off of. Jordan Love was at his best when they limited his attempts and kept him out of harm’s way. Whenever the Packers were forced to play aggressively and pass the ball more than three or four times per drive, Love would always make mistakes or get mauled by blitzers.
Love’s fortunes this season might be tied to Josh Jacobs’ (as well as MarShawn Lloyd and Emmanuel Wilson’s) fortunes. Despite them adding more receiver talent in their WR room with first-round pick Matthew Golden and third-round pick Sai’Vion Williams, I don’t think we should expect Love to come out and start playing like an MVP. His numbers last year during his hot streak suggest that he’s more of a game manager than a big playmaker going forward, and that is not a bad thing. Steve Young averaged less than 30 passes per game in his career, and he’s considered one of the best QBs of all time because he was accurate (leading the league in completion percentage in five different seasons) and effective (leading the league in passer rating in six different seasons).
While Steve Young might be a bit of an ambitious comparison (especially this early into Love’s career), it tells you that you don’t need to throw the ball 600 times a season to win MVP and take your team to Super Bowls. Jordan Love doesn’t need to throw the ball more than 30 times a game to succeed as a top-end QB. In fact, the best modern-day example of this happened last year with Josh Allen.
Allen had been throwing about 570 balls a season (33.5 passes a game) during his last four years, but last year, their running game blew up, and Josh Allen’s raw passing number dropped quite a ways. He only threw 483 passes (28.5 passes a game), but his passer rating and his QBR soared, and he won his first-ever MVP. Do I think Jordan Love is going to play like Josh Allen and win an MVP next year? No. But I do think we could see the passing numbers look similar to Josh Allen’s last year, and we could see that boost the Packers’ win total into the double digits, perhaps as much as 12 or 13 wins. Packers fans would probably prefer that result to Jordan Love winning an MVP anyway.
