This time last year, Jordan Love was an unknown. The fourth-year quarterback of the Green Bay Packers was still getting used to the speed of the NFL game. He was hesitant. He didn’t always trust what he saw because he was still figuring out everything that was coming his way.
In 2023, Love transformed before everyone’s eyes. He was a big question mark in his first year as a full-time starter, but after exploding in the latter part of the season, he became the NFL’s new star. Look at his game logs and you’ll see a marked improvement from where he was after Week 9 to when he graduated.
After Week 9, the Packers were drowning. They were 3-6, and a big reason for that was Love’s play. He threw 10 interceptions with eight touchdowns and a completion percentage of less than 60 percent. After Week 9, Love exploded, leading the Packers to a 6-2 finish and a Wild Card upset victory over the Dallas Cowboys. During that span, Love threw 21 touchdown passes with one interception and posted a quarterback rating above 100 in eight of the final nine games. He finished the season with 32 touchdown passes, better only by Dak Prescott’s NFL record of 36 touchdown passes. At one point last season, Love was last among starters in completion percentage and clawed his way back to 21st overall (64.2).
He received a huge contract extension during the offseason and will become even more dangerous with the signing of running back Josh Jacobs – and the Eagles’ new defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, knows it.
“Yeah, the biggest problem defending their offense is they run as well as they throw. So they have a really good mix of first and second down and play-action, and that makes it hard to defend,” Fangio said. “Then when you add in what you alluded to with the running, mobile quarterback, it adds another dimension. They’re really hard to defend. They run and throw equally well, and then when you add in an athletic quarterback, it’s going to be a crapshoot all day long.”
Putting pressure on Love will be key. That has to be done by pushing inside. When asked this week about the condition of defensive tackles Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis, Fangio said in his direct style: “We’ll see. They haven’t been pressured as much as they could potentially be pressured in this game, as far as the number of plays they might have to run. So that’s not decided yet.”
Is Carter where Fangio wants him? Will Carter be involved in the plays?
“You know, I think we’ll have a better barometer after this game,” Fangio said. “I think he only made three plays in the first preseason game. Practice is practice. I think I’ll be able to answer that better in a few weeks.”
This is a new defense learning a new scheme, even if some of the veterans have played in various incarnations of Fangio’s style, does Fangio still feel like his defense has had enough time to form up and be ready for Love and the Packers?
“In my opinion, you never get enough (time),” he said. “But we certainly had enough to be ready. I think it would have been nice to have one or two more training sessions together to back that up, so we can see different attacks and different tactics from the opponent. But overall, I think it went well.”
We’ll see.
