Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers’ offense had a good first day of joint practices competing against New England. But the promising part of his performance is more so about who and what he did it against rather than any one specific play.
For the most part, I thought what we saw from Love on the practice field against the New England Patriots encapsulated well his recent performances. He went through his progressions, comfortable taking the check down rather than trying to force the ball into a tight window like he has in the past. The end result were no turnovers or even any passes that I deemed turnover-worthy.
Love continued to attack the flats and middle parts of the field. New England’s secondary did well taking away the deep ball for the most part, so Love took what was available to him. There were a couple of throws he would like to have back, particularly a few over throws, but when the opportunity was there to create a big play, whether downfield or by yards after the catch (YAC), Love took advantage.
“I think it’s really just going through the progressions. For me, it’s not trying to force something that isn’t there. That’s what I’m trying to keep working on because in the past, I might try to force something in there when I don’t need to. So just continuing to play the play out, (and) work on my reads.”
On one play, Love found Jayden Reed over the middle on an intermediate crosser that led to a YAC opportunity. On another, he connected with Luke Musgrave down the seam in the red zone for a touchdown. Then on a deep post route, Love hit Christian Watson in stride, who got behind both the cornerback and safety for what would have been a long touchdown pass.
“We just ran a good concept right there,” said Love. “I was just pretty much looking at Rome come across on the left side and the DB hesitated a little bit and gave me a chance to hit Christian over the top on a field post. It’s a concept we run a lot, we haven’t had any success hitting the field post this year, so this was actually the first one we hit.”
More so in joint practices than in the preseason, opposing defenses are more willing to not play so vanilla. New England threw a lot of different looks at Love, including playing with a wide variety of personnel, they also threw several blitzes at him, and had a lot of late movement and disguised coverages.
“They mixed up a lot of looks,” said Love about New England’s defense. “They do a really good job of that. They threw a couple all outs (blitzes) at us today, which is something we need a lot of work at, and to continue to grow with that. But I think they just do a really good job of mixing up looks, disguising cover-2, man and all that.”
This part of the equation, the fact that Love put together another sound day going up against this particular opponent, is what I find the most promising. The blitzes, disguised coverages, and rotating personnel are all things that I expect many opposing defenses to throw at Love, especially early on in the season. Oftentimes for an inexperienced quarterback, it’s these elements that create confusion. But at least on Wednesday, Love stood up to it well.
The play of both Romeo Doubs and Christian Watson helped as well. Both were creating chaos for the New England secondary, something that was very evident during a two-minute drill, where Love led the offense from their own 25 yard line to inside the New England 25-yard line while only completion passes to Watson and Doubs. Credit also needs to be given to the Packers offensive line for holding up in pass protection.
Now, as is the case for any young player, the next step is for Love to build upon his most recent performance, but his play in the midst of the New England defense trying to confuse him illustrates the he and his development are heading in the right direction.
“I think protections,” said Love when asked what he wants to take from the first joint practice. “Just being able to see their looks. They do a lot of different personnels and put a lot of different guys on the line of scrimmage. So just trying to figure out who’s who and trying to pick up personnel’s and our protections better is what I want to do tomorrow.”