On Sunday afternoon, on a string maintained by avid family Packer backers, I indicated, “Don’t expect them [the Packers] to win tonight but if the kid [Packer Quarterback Jordan Love] plays well against the World Champions [the Kansas City Chiefs], maybe – just maybe – we’ve got something.”
Mr. Love completed 25-of-36 passes for 267 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. As all who care are aware, the Packers (arguably aided by two late-game pass interference infractions that weren’t called 😉 ) defeated the Chiefs 27 – 19 on Sunday night. If the season ended now, Green Bay would qualify for the NFC playoffs under the NFL’s process for determining playoff priority.
As anybody reading any of the Packer-related notes which I have posted in recent years is well aware, I have had deep doubts about Mr. Love’s ability to worthily succeed his storied Packer Quarterback predecessors, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. My concerns were based less upon his uncertain play in his infrequent appearances during Mr. Rodgers’ last Green Bay seasons than upon the team’s marked reluctance to move on from Mr. Rodgers – an approach in stark contrast to the haste with which the team dispensed with Mr. Favre in favor of Mr. Rodgers a football generation ago – despite Mr. Rodgers’ $50 million 2022 salary and his tendency to be what my mother would have called, “obstreperous.” Green Bay’s apparent hesitation to transition to Mr. Love appeared to me to be a clear indication that the team — despite Packer General Manager Brian Gutekunst’s decision to move up in the first round of the 2020 NFL draft to select him – didn’t consider him, after years of review, to be able to perform at anywhere near the level of excellence maintained by Messrs. Favre and Rodgers dating back to 1992.
After a promising start that included leading an 18-point fourth quarter comeback to beat the New Orleans Saints 18 – 17 in Week 3, Mr. Love experienced mid-season doldrums – the team lost four in row to fall to 2 – 5 — that reinforced the doubts of his skeptics – including me 😉 . Since that time, Mr. Love has – to use another phrase of my mother’s – “come on like gangbusters”; in his last three games, Mr. Love has thrown eight touchdown passes with no interceptions (although a couple of his biggest throws against Kansas City were more reminiscent of Mr. Favre than Mr. Rodgers – which is to say that although they were successful, they were a bit dicey). He has led the Green and Gold to impressive victories over a hungry Detroit Lions team on the road on Thanksgiving and now over the World Champion Chiefs (who seemed at least to me to believe, coming into Sunday night’s game, that they were going to win pretty easily). I understand that before the Kansas City game, Mr. Love’s quarterbacking statistics were largely indistinguishable from those posted by Mr. Rodgers at the same point in his first season as the Green Bay starter.
Based upon what we’ve seen thus far, am I hailing Mr. Love as The Third Coming? Certainly not. We’ll see how he performs for the rest of the year. Nobody was really expecting much after the Packers’ mid-season nosedive; now, although none of Green Bay’s last four opponents has a better record than the Packers, the expectations and the pressure – the hope to make the playoffs – will be there. Young quarterbacks frequently regress in their early years of development (although I don’t recall either Mr. Favre or Mr. Rodgers doing so to any notable degree). Even if Green Bay does somehow make the playoffs, I would expect that it will be easily dispatched by any of the NFC teams likely to be its first round opponent. That said, it’s fun to have a young team that shows promise to root for, to provide a distraction from the issues and cares generally addressed in these pages.
This note is primarily for the benefit of those of our younger Packer fan family members, who all along have been much more bullish about Mr. Love’s prospects than I, and have joshed me about my misgivings. To them, I acknowledge that maybe – just maybe – we’ve got something 🙂 .
McCoy's Noise 