Jordan Love will be an all-time great
This is the bar now. Nobody was better from mid-November on. What's next for the quarterback we've trumpeted at Go Long? Greatness, of course. Our 2024 NFL Season Preview series continues.
No video evidence exists. The workout lives on only in the memories of Jordan Love and his longtime quarterbacks coach, Steve Calhoun.
Usually, there’d be a batch of receivers present to catch passes with Calhoun filming the entire session on his iPad to deconstruct later. But training camp was closing in. Love was leaving California in the morning and simply wanted to sneak in one final training session before the 2024 season began.
So after taping a podcast together, the two headed straight from the studio to the turf practice field at Santa Ana Valley High School in Orange County, Calif. No receivers. No film. Only Love and the man who’s taught him how to play the position since he was 15. A few high schoolers served as eyewitnesses nearby.
Know this: Calhoun is extremely difficult to impress.
Especially when it comes to the kid he has pushed so hard, so long.
“But that workout?” Calhoun says. “I was just looking around, like ‘This is unbelievable.’”
Love simulated play calls and pocket movements/manipulations. Calhoun was his receiver. Standing at various spots all over the field, he held his hands in front of his face, then his chest, then near his right shoulder to pretend a zone defender’s on his left side. Love’s ball arrived— on a rope, every time — directly into his palms. He barely had to move his hands a centimeter. This was the equivalent of Steph Curry walking into a gym and drilling 30 three-pointers in a row. The perfect workout. Everything the two worked on all offseason came to life.
Calhoun knows his protégé must align protections and decode coverages as an NFL starter. But he implored him to remember this feeling. His footwork. His balance. His hip torque. How the ball flicked off his forefinger. Throw to throw, this session was Love’s personal Michelangelo. Throw the ball with this level of accuracy and there was a 0.0 percent chance any NFL defense would stop him this 2024 season.
“I was blown away,” Calhoun says. “I’m stuttering for words right now. … It was amazing. He absolutely crushed that workout.”
Love returned to Green Bay, Wisc., and inked a four-year, $220 million dollar contract.
For three years, he’s been the sport’s greatest mystery. A shadow in the glow of four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers. From unhinged backlash the night he was selected 26th overall by the Packers in 2020 to Rodgers holding the franchise hostage for three months in 2021, to Rodgers then inking a massive contract of his own in 2022, to the Packers finally moving on in 2023, the quarterback has waited. And waited. And now? He’s navigating a Super Bowl contender.
The plan was always genius. Even back to those Bambi rookie days, Love possessed the mentality you cannot coach, in addition to Mahomesian gifts articulated by those who know him best.
After three years perfecting what can be coached — and a stormy 2 ½ months to start the season — Love was unequivocally the best quarterback in the NFL from Week 11 to one fateful throw in the divisional playoff round. It’s silly that a Rodgers or Love? debate even raged outside the building. As we reported, Green Bay was sold. Brian Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur made the ballsy, correct decision. All that was required was a sucker: the New York Jets. Now, the debate that raged this offseason will also look silly. One year from now, everyone will view Love’s $55 million annual salary as a spectacular bargain because the quarterback who disemboweled the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC wild card, who completed 70 percent of his passes for 2,616 yards with 23 scores and only three picks through the 7-3 run to end 2023, who had Calhoun lifting his jaw off the turf is only getting started.
If 2023 was the introduction, this 2024 season marks the coronation of one of the true stars at the most important position in sports. Championships. MVPs. It’s all within reach.
Brett Favre, the icon who resurrected the franchise in 1992, is sold: “I wouldn’t change anything. What I see, I wouldn’t change.”
Mike Tannenbaum, the former NFL GM, is banging the drum. Nor does he give a damn that is his X timeline’s a bloodbath. He warns against “reputational thinking.” Remove all preconceived opinions of Josh Allen and Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson, he begins, and objectively study that 10-game run. The blowout in Dallas, to him, was the equivalent of pitching a perfect game in the MLB postseason.
“If you flew in from another country and watched football for the first time and had to rank the quarterbacks how they played,” Tannenbaum says, “you could easily say that Jordan Love played the position the best.”
David Yost, the QB’s offensive coordinator at Utah State, read Siaosi Mariner’s comment at Go Long, the receiver who politely informed the masses in 2020: “You’re going to get Patrick Mahomes.” And he did not object. It was actually the rest of Mariner’s quote that piqued his interest, the part where Mariner added: “I don’t even want to discredit Jordan. He definitely is his own person.” Yost agrees. Yost sees no cap on Love’s game. We all have palpitations whenever Mahomes hypnotizes DBs with no-look passes and waddles through mosh pits of 300-pounders to gain eight yards on third and 7. But what new standard can Love create? That’s where the discourse is headed now. “He can do anything,” says Yost. “He can do things that other people haven’t done before at the highest level. That’s a special place to be.”
Kurt Warner, the Hall of Fame QB, taps the brakes. He’s not ready to rank Love amongst the league’s best… not yet. He gets why the Packers paid up. Love’s combination of playmaking and smart decision-making is rare.
For three years, Calhoun was the mad scientist in the lab mixing potions. He’s the one who got us to believe. Through the 1,360 total days between Love’s final start at Utah State and his debut as the Packers’ Day 1 starter, Calhoun pleaded for patience. Now, his creation’s unleashed on the league. In full.
“The sky’s the limit,” he says. “He will be one of the top quarterbacks year-in, year-out.”
Favre. To Rodgers. To Love. Green Bay’s desired half-century of quarterback ecstasy is here. Not that anybody inside Lambeau Field was thinking of perennial Super Bowl contention on Sept. 24. As players trudged into the tunnel for halftime of their home opener, they were serenaded with roaring boos typically reserved for poverty franchises.
The Packers were getting blanked by the New Orleans Saints. Lord, it was ugly.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, still down 17-0, a fourth-and-2 pass sailed incomplete. A collective “Ugh!” swept through the stadium. A dejected Matt LaFleur grabbed his knees. A young quarterback unbuckled each chin strap and headed to the bench to study his tablet as more boos rained and fans considered swapping their cheeseheads for ‘Aints-approved paper bags. Then, Love came alive. Love led the second-best fourth quarter comeback in the team’s 103-year history by pioneering 46-, 80- and 80-yard scoring drives. Green Bay won.
That day, coaches and players alike truly started to believe Love was special.
“He didn’t blink the whole time,” said one Packers source who’s around Love daily. “He just kept shooting his shots. That was the moment for him where I saw it click like, ‘Alright, this guy’s got that.’ He’s not going to get discouraged. Whether we’re up 24, down 24, he is going to be the same guy out there. And that’s rare.”
Inside the locker room, LaFleur told players this was the “most resilient performance” he had ever seen in his life.
It wasn’t hyperbole. It was only the beginning.
Here’s what’s coming next.
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‘Foxhole’ quarterback
History tends to repeat at the site of the sport’s holy lands. Anxiety heightened that September afternoon the same way it did the summer of 2008. Back to Rodgers being jeered during the team’s “Family Night” scrimmage. The same way it did on Sept. 20, 1992. Back to the team’s beloved “Majik Man,” Don Majkowski, writhing in pain with a mangled ankle.
Another mystery of a quarterback who cost his team a first-round pick trotted onto the field. He kept this game vs. the Cincinnati Bengals close.
And with 1 minute, 7 seconds remaining, the Packers at their own 8-yard line, a hyper Brett Favre stepped into the huddle and acted as if he was starring in his own movie. He proclaimed: “We’re going to win this game!” Only, when Favre stared into the eyes of offensive linemen a full decade older, they were “grumpy” and “ornery” and not enthused by the battle cry. “Shut the f--k up,” one said. “Call the play.”
Favre, of course, led the Packers to a 24-23 win. He dropped, pumped, knifed the game-winner to Kitrick Taylor up the right sideline with 13 seconds left and celebrated his first of 45 game-winning drives by triumphantly ripping his helmet off and lifting both of his arms into the air. Linemen embraced him one by one and — right then — Favre knew: He won over his teammates.
“A light bulb flipped on,” Favre says, “and I could sense it. I didn’t play to get my teammates to love me. I played because I loved to play and I wanted to win and I was a competitor. But it was important to me that I had the guys on my side. I wanted them to believe in me. I wanted them to fight for me. I wanted them to do whatever they had to do for me because that’s what I would do for them.
“My success is largely based on that thought process. That’s how important I think it is to win over your team and teammates.”
That’s the exact effect Favre detects in the Packers today.
Love couldn’t be any more different in demeanor than the two who preceded him. He’s not tackling teammates in the end zone or head-butting Warren Sapp like Favre. Not barking “Stupid f--king call!” at his playcaller or informing Chicago Bears fans, “I f--king own you!” like Rodgers. There’s bare-minimum emotion from this quarterback, whether he’s down 17-0 in the fourth quarter of a home opener or throwing a playoff TD.
Favre is positive that Rodgers’ legacy loomed large.
But Love was strikingly cool and — ultimately — earned the same exact respect he did.
“He has a demeanor,” Favre says, “that you can’t tell if they’re up. You can’t tell if they’re down, but it serves him well and he proved that he can make the throws. He can make the plays. The guys love playing for him and with him. And to me, that’s a hurdle that a lot of quarterbacks never get through because it’s hard for guys to jump into the foxhole with you — or want to. And it was obvious to me that the guys wanted that: ‘We’ll do that for Jordan, he’s our guy.’”
No statistic measures this impact. But the entire Packers team clearly took on Love’s no-frills, no-worries persona. When he suffered an embarrassing MNF showing in Las Vegas, when playoff odds shrunk, when they traveled to Dallas as 7.5-point underdogs, his unflinching focus became the team’s focus. Green Bay was the youngest roster to make the postseason since the NFL expanded to 16 games in 1978, reacting to stressful situations with the same flat-lined personality as their QB. Exactly as those rowdy, Lambeau Leapin’ Packers followed Favre’s emotional lead and exactly as Rodgers’ offenses carried themselves with a level of arrogance and inevitability. He’d inform the masses to “R-E-L-A-X” or offer one “run the table” decree and players believed.
By season’s end, the 22-, 23- and 24-year-olds around Love were equally fearless.
Everyone gets paid a lot of money, Favre explains, so it shouldn’t matter what a right guard or a wide receiver or a linebacker thinks of the quarterback.
But it does. It always does in pro football.
“It makes a world of difference,” Favre says. “You hate the guy next to you, at some point that’s going to affect you and the team in a negative way. When, it remains to be seen. But at some point, it’s going to rear its ugly head. That’s not the case with Jordan. The guys love him and on his bad days or after a bad play, they’re going to rally around him.”
Favre likes Love’s arm, his accuracy, his playmaking but keeps returning to the quarterback’s body language.
All eyes are on the QB.
“I always pay attention to with any quarterback. If I were coaching quarterbacks and I saw a guy — and his body language was negative at times — like shrugging his shoulders or pouting on the field, I’m going to tell him, ‘That shit don’t fly. You’re going to run off the field.’ If you celebrate with your teammates after a touchdown, great. But if you pout after a dropped pass or a bad throw, that’s not good. People see that. He doesn’t do that. He’s cool, calm and collected. I’d rather that than pouting and moping and bitching at guys or down on himself.
“He is not rattled.”
His way, Love crossed the same threshold as Favre, as Rodgers before him. He’ll have a realistic chance to win a pile of MVP awards like both and, perhaps, more than one Super Bowl.
So, how did we get here?
Disciplined
How easily we forget that Aaron Rodgers held a gun to the temple of the organization in 2021. He wanted the GM fired. The Packers took their floggings, put up with two more seasons and — once the QB’s play dropped off — Mark Murphy, Brian Gutekunst and Matt LaFleur all signed off on extracting this thorn from the team’s right buttocks. Nobody could justify the drama anymore.
One coach on staff is familiar with what we’ve heard about Rodgers. He knows the QB has a reputation.
But when asked about Jordan Love, he’s got to start with Aaron Rodgers.
From his vantage point, Rodgers was an exceptional mentor.
Love — exactly as he did at Utah State — did not waste those 1,360 days as a backup. He was an active pupil. QB2 closely studied QB1’s mechanics during practice and Rodgers always overemphasized the nitty-gritty footwork details. Love needed the help. Early on, he was long-legged and clunky with his drops. Now, as the starter, he’s the one over-emphasizing everything in practice. Quarterbacks cannot take haphazard 11-step drops in LaFleur’s rhythmic offense.
Multiple sources remember Rodgers pulling Love aside to share trade secrets, such as showing him how to cut down his fourth step on a specific drop, a specific play to sync up with the route. Or maybe Love needed to get just “a little bit closer” to the hip on a ball fake. Coaches can correct stuff off film. But Rodgers was invaluable in offering real help in real time during practice.
“And not in a douchey way,” one coach recalls, “It was a true mentorship role out there.”
Not that Rodgers was thrilled with the Packers’ decision. By any means. He was pissed at the organization for drafting a quarterback in 2020 but never directed vitriol toward Love. He knew there was nothing Love could’ve done.
“Aaron never showed any sort of anger or was pissed off at Jordan,” this source continues. “He helped him develop. I don't want to speak for Jordan, but I don't think he'd be where he is now if he didn't have that mentorship from Aaron.
“The good and the bad.”
This final line, of course, is a throwback to the madness of 2021. Through allies and surrogates, Rodgers made it known he didn’t want to be a Packer. He attended the Kentucky Derby and went on vacation to Hawaii with then-fiancée Shailene Woodley (and actor Miles Teller, and Teller’s wife). He made time for Kenny Mayne on ESPN, if not Gutekunst. He made it clear he wanted the GM canned, the Packers refused to budge, then — upon finally returning — staged his airing-of-grievances press conference for 31 minutes and 40 seconds.
Love was one season in. Still raw.
“For him to mentally handle that,” one coach says, “is the definition of discipline. That was a mental rollercoaster. Like he does everything, he took it in-stride.”
By working… and working… with extreme patience that’s nonexistent in a spastic generation obsessed with instant gratification. The algorithm was different here. Think about it: Each AM, for 1,000+ days, Love woke up a backup. As the rest of his 2020 draft class flourished, he didn’t know if his chance in Green Bay would ever come. Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts led teams to Super Bowls. Tua Tagovailoa struck gold with Mike McDaniel and Tyreek Hill. Justin Herbert totaled 102 touchdowns his first three seasons. All were on the fast track toward extravagant second contracts. At best, Love’s future was hazy. At worst, he was a punchline, a reminder that Gutekunst didn’t draft a receiver.
No wonder “patience” is the word Calhoun uses. To him, that’s how Love got from Point A to Point B. “Showing up to work every day,” he adds, “trying to be the best version of Jordan and not trying to be like Aaron.” Giving a quarterback three full years to develop looks swell on paper. But intrinsic to the Packers’ unique quarterback blueprint is a mental strain. Be it Rodgers behind a vacillating Favre or Love behind a volatile Rodgers, the backup must somehow enter a different mental space each day.
In Love’s case, the starter won two more MVPs and signed a $150 million contract.
“That takes a special guy,” says one team source close to Love. “I know it wasn’t easy for Jordan to sit behind Aaron for three years. To be disciplined enough to just f--king practice? That’s hard.
“He didn’t blink.”
As Yost says, Love’s sitting there thinking he’ll never be the guy in Green Bay. “Because,” he adds, “they’re going to get rid of me before they get rid of him.” Love had zero choice but to take advantage of any scant snaps that came his way and, even then, it wasn’t always pretty. The Kansas City start in Year 2 was rough. For a while, coaches were forced to “sell everybody,” Yost adds, on a throw here or a throw there.
All along, however, the Packers trusted that Love had it because a plan alone isn’t enough. If so, Brett Hundley would’ve blossomed into a starter under Mike McCarthy’s watch. At least Graham Harrell would’ve taken a snap for another team. Instead of stressing over circumstance, Love punched in, punched out, improved when nobody outside of the building noticed. The pivot was 2022. Rodgers blew off OTAs and Love more than merely functioned — he looked like a starter. The improvements in footwork, fundamentals and knowledge of LaFleur’s offense were substantial. He helped get the rookie receivers up to speed on how Rodgers preferred routes ran and it helps that Love’s temperament mirrors that of QBs coach Tom Clements. The steely 71-year-old coach is the most even-keeled coach players will encounter in their NFL lives.
Love maximized his cameo vs. the Eagles, Rodgers bellyflopped at Lambeau in the Week 18 play-in game vs. Detroit and lines officially crossed. The Packers felt comfortable moving on.
Calhoun can’t pinpoint one defining moment in their training. (“He never stopped working,” he says.) But that next summer — when Love held a Packers West camp in Orange County — he couldn’t help but notice that receivers were “hanging on every one of his words.” Love recreated specific situations. If a defense plays Cover 4 and they bring the safety down, he’d explain, run your route like this. All of his young wideouts and vet running back Aaron Jones were in attendance. Jones told Calhoun that it’s their job to make the QB’s life easier but that this was the other way around.
True camaraderie grew.
Trial by fire might’ve worked but so many teams are quick to yank a young player. A team must be willing to grow through the pain or willing to let the quarterback sit. The difference between Love in 2020 and Love today? “Night and day,” one coach on staff says. “Not even close.”
Says Calhoun: “It didn’t click early, but when it did click, those last 9, 10, 11 games were awesome.”
Activated
The GM who put his career on the line for the QB was blunt. At midseason, Brian Gutekunst made it clear the Packers needed to see more from Love to commit to 2024. The team fell to 3-6. This passing game conjured more nightmares of Randy Wright and Anthony Dilweg than memories of Favre and Rodgers.
Each Monday AM was a Love roast fest on the radio airwaves.
But the dam was bound to break. Love was mentally logging everything. There’s a major difference between watching film until you’re bloodshot and facing live NFL defenses. Love needed to figure out how to stick with all that footwork and trust his eyes and play with instincts in the face of exotic disguises. Even through that 3-6 start, his best trait as a quarterback was crystallizing.
“If he gets tricked once,” says one team source, “he rarely gets tricked again.”
Examples abound. One opponent last season was sharp at holding its shell coverage until the last split-second but there was one linebacker a smidge out of position pre-snap. This told Love that someone must be rolling down to the C gap. There was no way the defense could stay in this shell look — two safeties propped over the defense — if the linebacker was cheating. Thus, the defense was actually deploying single-high coverage. He could audible accordingly.
Most young quarterbacks would’ve been fooled all game. Love picked up on the glitch the first time he saw the picture on the sideline.
The rest of the game, each time Love saw that linebacker cheating, he knew a safety was stalking into the box.
The more live defenses he faced, the more Love found solutions. A major reason why the Packers aren’t overly concerned about the rest of the NFL having a full offseason to hyper-analyze their quarterback. Growing pains are expected. But they know his ability to learn quickly is special, and LaFleur is one of the league’s best at giving his quarterback answers within the play so Love doesn’t have to overthink. As 2023 progressed, the rare instances the Packers were fooled, Love got to his checkdown quicker. Instead of interceptions, the Packers got a three- or four-yard gain. Some of those checkdowns busted into big plays.
His biggest jump came in trusting how his feet timed up with the rhythm of the play.
Most times, there will be an open receiver. But if a defense sold man coverage — the Packers had a man-beater on — and that coverage flipped to Tampa 2 post-snap? Love didn’t panic. He checked the ball down.
This is where Love’s ascent differs sharply from Favre, the daredevil who didn’t know what a “nickel defense” was and chucked the ball to Sterling Sharpe as much as possible. There’s no need for Love to feel such a gravitational pull toward a No. 1. He can genuinely execute LaFleur’s play as designed. When the playoffs began, we hung out with Romeo Doubs at Republic Chophouse in Green Bay and Doubs insisted that there’s always going to be somebody open in this offense. (“Everybody can play in our room,” he said. “Everybody can ball.”) There’s an understanding that Love won’t play favorites.
In a Week 17 blowout win over the Vikings, Bo Melton caught six balls for 105 yards and a score. Jayden Reed caught two touchdowns.
In the Week 18 finale, Dontayvion Wicks had two scores.
In the wild card, Doubs had six receptions for 151 yards with a TD.
“Jordan, his poise is insane,” Doubs explained then. “And I talk to him all the time. He can have a bad play and his mouth is closed. I’m not saying he’s a robot. Obviously, if he makes a mistake, he’s going to talk through what he did wrong and then learn from it. But even if he makes the best of plays, he’s still on the iPad.
“His consistency is through the roof man. To witness it, it’s amazing.”
No wonder the second half of the Packers’ season didn’t resemble the first. Calhoun wasn’t surprised. But Calhoun also sensed a “we can’t play any worse” energy out of the entire offense. From the Chargers game on, they were loose. Yost, now the OC at Florida International, noticed the same energy in LaFleur’s playcalling. He wasn’t holding Love back at all. Suddenly, the Jordan Love that Yost coached in ‘18 — when the QB threw for 32 scores and only six picks — was back in all his glory on the pro level through the 7-3 finish. At Utah State, Love’s downfield accuracy was most impressive to him. Love’s best throw? “Two balls.” That is, a throw in the Cover-2 hole, over the linebacker yet in front of the safety.
Yost saw Love calling audibles at the line of scrimmage, which brought back memories of the QB making him look smart as a coach.
Most of all, Love was learning from mistakes. His M.O. at Utah State.
“If he made a mistake,” Yost says, “you could expect that won’t happen again. He’s able to go ‘OK, I can’t make that throw in that situation or that coverage is going to take that away.’ If I went back through his bad plays he had at Utah State for me, they were all one-offs. It didn't happen, and happen, and happen to where you say, ‘There’s a hole in his game.’ It was, ‘No, that was a mistake. He’s learned from it.’ He is able to put it in the database so when it comes up again, he reacts the right way.”
When Warner studied Love’s first half vs. Love’s second half, he didn’t think much changed. He thought Love was making smart decisions and simply missed some throws due to sloppy technique. But win to win to win, confidence grows. The passing game became more Pop-a-Shot.
“So much of it comes down to winning versus losing,” Warner says. “That was the key: Making those critical plays in the critical moments to win games as opposed to losing games.”
Synergy helps, too.
Yes, Rodgers changed plays before the snap. Changes that often helped. There were also stretches of time when Rodgers called the plays in Green Bay, a plan agreed upon with LaFleur beforehand. But now, the quarterback is a direct extension of the playcaller. Sources in the building say this creates a true “flow” to the Packers offense. One play sets up the next. One drive sets up the next. LaFleur maintains control of the chess board. And considering the Packers were so young at receiver last season, having one playcaller was unbelievably refreshing. Calming.
Wide receivers didn’t feel as if they needed to live up to Rodgers’ lofty standard. They didn’t need to think nearly as much pre-snap.
It’s no surprise that Rodgers and Jets wideout Garrett Wilson were caught in a heated exchange at training camp. He’s demanding, for better and worse.
Planting the seeds of a young offense beneath one fueled by Rodgers and Davante Adams’ improvisation — the one rooted in thousands of reps together — was always smart. As if the Packers groomed a JV quarterback in the pros. Now, Love’s autonomy grows organically with teammates he has practiced with year ‘round since they were rookies. From Orange County, Calif., to Brown County, Wisc. In 2024, he’ll change more plays within the fabric of the offense. Expect him to have more control of the 2-minute offense, too.
This is where Love has a chance to blast off.
This is why Packers players and coaches are beaming. The more he learned, the more his database grew and the more they saw a special gear to Love’s game.
Leading Dallas, 14-0, in the playoffs, Love faced a third and 7 with 3:28 remaining in the first half. Sleepy Cowboys fans woke up. Jerry’s World got loud. Lined up in five wide, out of shotgun, Love used his cadence — Rodgers-style — to force Dallas to show its hand. Two blitzers were coming up the gut. This was zero coverage. Love swiftly maxed up his protection as the playclock dripped 5… to 4… to 3. He smacked his hands together, signaled Jayden Reed to motion inside and knew he had Wicks singled up on a post route. Didn’t matter that it was five-time Pro Bowler Stephon Gilmore in coverage.
Pressure in his face, off his back foot, Love flicked a gorgeous 20-yard touchdown.
That split-second audible wasn’t baked into LaFleur’s call. Love adjusted on his own.
This is why the Packers viewed Love as “Rodgers 2.0.”
Warner is not ready to crown Love. He’s seen Jared Goff lead one team to a Super Bowl and nearly another so he’ll take the Detroit Lions’ passer over Love. “And he may not have as much upside as a Jordan Love,” Warner says. “But I don’t like to rank my guys on upside because none of us really know what the upside is other than, ‘OK, he’s got more physical ability.’ Jared has been more consistent.” Considered little more than collateral damage, Goff helped wake a franchise up from the dead. He’s thrown for 30,000+ yards. He’s zero mystery, so Lions GM Brad Holmes had no problem paying $53 million per year. Meanwhile, a three-year apprenticeship meant the Packers had to make their tectonic decision off of one year of film.
The unknown works two ways, however. Warner acknowledges there’s something special to Love’s game: “Playmaking.”
“The timeline was sped up for them,” Warner says, “but they saw all those elements that say, ‘Well, in his first year, if he could do all of these things? We feel pretty comfortable that that’s who he is. That’s what we’re going to see for the entirety of his career.’”
The next week, Green Bay had its ticket to Detroit for the NFC Championship Game punched… and squandered it away through the second half.
On the final drive vs. those 49ers, Love threw an interception across his body.
A horrid decision.
A familiar sight for Packers fans.
“Been there!” says Favre. “I’ve been there.”
He expounds. Such mistakes were his worst characteristic on the field.
“My arm strength got me out of a lot of stuff. But it also got me in a lot of stuff,” Favre says. “And we could say that about a player in every sport — a home-run hitter. He struck out because he was swinging for the fence. Jordan’s smart and comfortable in the pocket. That was really uncharacteristic, at least in the one year watching him. And shit happens. I mean, I don’t know what else to say. Shit happens. You make a split-second decision in the heat of it. And he makes 100 of them during the course of the year.”
Out of those 100, Favre estimates 95 of Love’s decisions were dead-on correct.
The last thing any team should do is zap those instincts. The Packers know that arm is why they’re even in that playoff game. Love actually made a very similar decision earlier in the season, and it worked. At Pittsburgh, he heaved a risky ball deep to Reed and it gained 46 yards. Those terrified of such throws will forever fall short.
Adds Favre: “There were a lot of quarterbacks over the years that were super smart that would never make that throw and never even made it to the playoffs.”
These are the guts that eventually win Super Bowls.
Green Bay won’t hold Love back.
‘Mahomes’ & ‘Brady’
Hell no, Mike Tannenbaum isn’t backing down from his take that quaked. This side of Patrick Mahomes, yes, the first quarterback he’d take is Love.
In terms of “sustained excellence,” Tannenbaum first said on ESPN, “it’s Jordan Love and everybody else.”
Naturally, we needed to check in with the former Jets GM.
He begins with that “perfect game” pitched by Love in the playoffs. This was an opponent that scored the most points in the NFL and an opposing quarterback (Dak Prescott) who finished second in the MVP voting.
“And it was like the champion against an amateur,” Tannenbaum says. “It was such a decisive victory. One quarterback looked so much better than the other.”
He lauds Love’s “functional movement.” It’s rare to see a quarterback who’s this athletic, this fluid at 6 foot 4, 219 pounds. Tannenbaum didn’t think Love should begin contract negotiations at anything less than $60 million per year because his skill-set will age well. He expects Love to stay healthy. All of those Mahomesian qualities that Mariner raved about four years ago are beginning to manifest at the NFL level.
Tannenbaum thought the wild-card game would go a totally different direction. With one 12-play, 75-yard drive, he was sold.
“It wasn’t too big for him,” he says. “That’s a big place, national audience, road playoff game. And I wasn’t really sure what to expect. When I saw that, I was like, ‘Wow, we’re watching greatness.’”
Every QB debate must begin with the same qualifier: There is only one Patrick Mahomes. The magic to his game is unparalleled. But it’s not blasphemy to use Love’s name in the same sentence.
Yost cites a “cannon” of a right arm. He coached the likes of Justin Herbert, Chase Daniel and Blaine Gabbert to immense collegiate success and — when he was at Washington State — the longtime assistant picked up a rule from Mike Leach. The late-great offensive mind had right-handed quarterbacks only throw off bootlegs toward the right. He believed it was too difficult for a QB to boot left and flip his torso around.
Love essentially took this rule and shot it to the sun.
At Utah State, Yost had four naked boots in his playbook. Three went to the right and one to the left.
When he left for Texas Tech, he eliminated that play to left and told his staff they’d need to save it for the next Jordan Love. A select few quarterbacks in the sport truly defy the geometry of the field with their arm strength. The way Love drops the angle of his arm to sling the ball wherever he’d like reminds Yost of Rodgers. He also remembers what scouts said about Rodgers’ arm out of Cal. They were not that impressed.
His point: Years of training is what led to Rodgers becoming one of the most talented pure throwers of the football in NFL history.
Love had the same wait. Love can enter this sphere.
“He showed last year he can be one of the elite quarterbacks in the league,” Yost says. Everybody's battling for really second right now in the NFL because the guy on the top has got all of it and he’s doing it over and over and over again. But you’re good to be in the NFC, so you can try to be the other side of that and see where you can take your team with it. The next part of being a great quarterback is the winning part. Winning and winning and winning and winning.”
Initially, Tannenbaum is hesitant to verbalize the name of the greatest ever, the quarterback everybody’s chasing. Then, he goes all in. He brings up the Tom Brady trait to Love’s game. Back when Tannenbaum was running the Jets (2006- ‘12) and Dolphins (2015- ‘18), New England’s Brady knew exactly where he wanted to throw the ball and was insanely accurate. It drove him nuts. Nothing you do schematically even matters.
“And that’s what I saw with Love,” Tannenbaum says. “You could tell he knew where to go with it, and he was so accurate and that really becomes indefensible.”
“The game really slowed down for him. Our saying with Brady was: ‘Make him make the decision post-snap.’ And I think that’s what you’re going to really have to work on with Jordan — and that’s why I think he's just going to get better. We’ve seen him improve and I think that’s only going to get better and better.”
He’s not done.
“Jordan Love’s a better athlete, and that’s the part that’s really intriguing.”
Like Brady, he believes Love can make the correct play repeatedly.
Calhoun only sees that accuracy sharpening. He also trains the cousin of Packers linebacker Eric Wilson, a quarterback at Baldwin-Wallace. And when the coach asked Eric how OTAs and minicamp went this offseason, the vet brought up one full-field progression. Love completed one of the sport’s toughest throws: a 15-yard out late and to the outside.
One variable remains unknown. No quarterback could reach into the sternum of opponents and tear out hearts quite like the man who won 35 playoff games, including seven rings. Brady was ruthless. Mahomes is looking just as cruel. There’s something sociopathic inside of the quarterback who’s able to suffer the unconscionable playoff defeat, dust himself off, and re-climb the mountain. The difference between the elites who put up glossy numbers and the elites who win championships is everything that happens in the offseason. They’re obsessed with drastically improving a specific element of their game. An abject weakness becomes a strength. After busting onto the scene in ’18 — an MVP season that ended with an AFC title loss to Brady — KC’s Mahomes targeted his footwork.
LeBron discovers a jump shot. Kobe masters his fadeaway. Steph gets a millisecond faster hoisting 3-balls off the dribble.
When Love reconnected with Calhoun, there was no ambiguity. He needed to quit hopping at the top of his drops. The Hall of Famer Warner detected this flaw in the QB’s game, too.
From afar, this quirk made Calhoun cringe at his TV.
Love told Calhoun that he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
“And I’m like, ‘Dude, you’re six to eight inches off the ground right now!’” Calhoun says. “That was a big focus. You can’t anticipate when your feet are seven inches off the ground, the receiver’s open, and you’ve got to come back down to Earth before you can actually drive the ball at him.”
When Love does climb into the pocket, Calhoun also wanted him to do a better job of keeping his base.
Warner is sure part of the hopping is inherent to Love, while part’s from watching Rodgers for three years. He calls them “fadeaway jump shots” and “body throws” and says guys like Mahomes and Rodgers can pull it off. But even these two miss throws they should easily make. Lose your feet and there’s a good chance you’ll lose the play. “They’ll make a bunch,” Warner adds, “and it’s why they keep doing it, but they miss some critical throws along the way. I think that’s the biggest thing with Jordan.”
Cleaning this up will trigger big plays. Keep his base stable and he’ll have a better chance of hitting those crossing routes in-stride and that, Warner says, “becomes a game-changing play.”
During that legendary (albeit undocumented) workout, Love did not hop once.
He signed his new contract.
The Super Bowl is now the bar in 2024, and beyond.
QB Heaven
No owner means no threat of a billionaire infiltrating the most consequential football decisions. The Green Bay Packers forever have an innate advantage over the rest of the NFL. GMs Ron Wolf, Ted Thompson and Gutekunst all made the sort of bold (at times, cold) decisions that many NFL owners likely veto. The team’s president, Murphy, runs his business with minimal ego. He didn’t demand the team hang onto Favre or Rodgers one more season in the name of fan demand — he genuinely empowered his GMs to do the right thing.
Credit to the Atlanta Falcons for their guts in adopting the Love blueprint last April, but we probably shouldn’t hold our breath for such patience to go mainstream.
Billionaires become billionaires because they’re restless. It’s a virtue in other industries.
If their business starts to struggle, they throw money at the problem. They fix it — immediately.
Not in two years. Not three. Now.
“That’s why they can’t get out of their own way,” Yost says. “You don’t get to be an owner in the NFL because you’re a patient person.”
Love wasn’t thrilled to wait, but he sure hit the quarterback jackpot.
Other coaches and GMs talk a mean game about letting their first-round pick sit and wait and learn and… when they’re 0-5? In comes the rookie. In comes turmoil. It’s no coincidence that the two greatest QBs in NFL history — Brady and Mahomes — both sat as a rookies. Even in New England, owner Robert Kraft said before the draft he wanted his team to draft a quarterback. Hard to imagine he’ll be OK with Drake Maye sitting on the bench for too long.
The standard is obvious. Head coach Andy Reid, GM Brett Veach and Mahomes are in the midst of a dynasty.
But the way the Packers have a legitimate chance to reign in the NFC with the way they’re structured from Gutekunst to LaFleur to Love. The GM drafted five wide receivers and two tight ends in ’22 and ’23 alone, then an offensive tackle in the first round of this year’s draft. The influx of talent combined with LaFleur’s play designs allow Love to play more point guard in this offense.
LaFleur finally had the opportunity to run his offense in full last season, and proved he’s in the same class as his pals Shanahan and McVay. Nor is he alone at 1265 Lombardi. Back when I sat down with Rodgers each spring at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the MVP quarterback called Tom Clements “the biggest” reason for his consistency. Clements’ influence on Love today is obvious and further proof that quarterbacks can experience massive evolutionary changes. Yost still remembers coaching a game between Love and Josh Allen in college. No way did he think Allen would even blossom into the star he is today — Wyoming beat Utah State that day behind Allen’s power-read running.
We all often make the position more high-tech than it is.
Like Allen, this Utah State quarterback improved through old-fashioned sweat and tears.
Says Doubs: “His consistency, man. It’s through the roof man. To witness it, it’s amazing to see.”
Don’t be surprised if Doubs emerges as a No. 1, too. The receiver who shares the QB’s personality worked tirelessly with Love for another offseason. He’s another reason Love needed to speed up his drops — Doubs was lightning-quick out of his breaks. If other receivers need a tick longer, that’s fine. Love can chill for a breath on their routes. He needs to stay at Doubs’ speed.
Calhoun, who has trained six-time Pro Bowler Keenan Allen for years, predicts a monster season from the wideout.
“He is just so explosive,” Calhoun says. “And his hands. He will definitely be one of the best receivers in the NFL. He’s unbelievable. He’s so twitchy and fast and strong. I mean, some of these catches. I had him and Jordan and Keenan Allen and Romeo Doubs working out together, and it was unbelievable. I was just like, ‘Wow.’”
Of course, this all boils down to the quarterback himself.
No perfect planning matters if Love isn’t capable. In a matter of 1 ½ months, he completely changed the narrative around his name. The “kid” Yost remembers from college isn’t going to change a thing. He doesn’t expect Love to read or listen to any praise bestowed. Neither does Calhoun, who became a close mentor years ago when Love’s father, Orbin, died by suicide. Calhoun brings up the “village” around the quarterback. His mother. His sisters. His fiancé. After signing the contract, Love could hardly speak on the phone but it didn’t take him long to come down from cloud nine.
“We don’t have to keep him grounded, but he stayed grounded,” Calhoun says. “He’s just so humble. He just takes everything in stride. And I know he’s very grateful for his opportunity and the situation he’s in right now.
“One game at a time, one game at a time, one practice at a time, one meeting at a time.”
He’ll stick to what works.
But there has been one major change. Since the Packers shocked the world by drafting him on April 23, 2020, so much was out of his control. There was nothing he could do to get onto the field.
Now? Jordan Love is the one in complete control.
We’ve been tracking the Packers/Jordan Love story since launching in 2020.
A look back, icymi:
What am amazing article. Only at Go Long are you going to find the in depth scoop with awesome sources and fantastic writing!! Tyler, this article alone was worth the price of my annual subscription!!!!
That was an awesome article. I personally think Jordan will win more than Fave or Rodgers. He will be closer to Star in production.
It seemed odd or weird to me how well Jordan was received by his teammates. They absolutely love him! After beating the Bears in week one, during the post game interview Rashan yelling "quit playing with em" was eye opening. Clearly this team believes in and loves Jordan. I can't help but think that Rodgers was viewed as a dictator. Aaron's sometimes passive/ aggressive nature, calling out teammates in press conferences made it hard to love him as a teammate. I know they respected him but they didn't respond to him like they do Jordan.
Anyways, keep up the excellent work. I thoroughly enjoy reading all of your stuff.