With all of the issues and uncertainty going on around Jordan Love over the last month, some of the decisiveness in his decision-making has been zapped from him.
“I would say you’re right,” said Love after the Minnesota game, “I’m not as decisive. That’s where I need to continue to grow, continue to be better for the team.”
Two years ago, during the preseason, both Matt LaFleur and then offensive coordinator Nathanial Hacket were continually saying that what they wanted to see from Love was for him to “let it rip.” Now, letting it rip doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind and being overly aggressive, but rather, when a read is there, when a window opens, trust what you see and let it rip.
Fast forward to this past summer, and this decisiveness, or Love’s ability to let it rip, was one of the more impressive elements of his game. Despite having hardly any live game time over that two-year span, he looked vastly improved in this area. Love had struck a really good balance of knowing when to fit the ball into a tight window when to push it downfield, and when to continue through his progression and take what was available to him.
That continued into the early regular season. However, by Love’s own admission, now on a four-game losing streak, it’s an element of his game that he needs to now refine once again.
“It’s just being that decisive player that’s going to go through my reads and know where I need to go with the ball and put the ball in the right place,” added Love. “But I’m not being good enough in some of those situations where I was holding the ball a little too much, the sack, the fumble. That’s where it comes down to decision making, just making decisive reads, and that’s where I’ve got to be better.”
The chaos going on around Love each game has been a key contributor to the regression of this key attribute. It can be difficult to let it rip and trust what you see when you’re receivers haven’t been in the right place and at the right time consistently. It can be difficult to let it rip when drops are an issue, and any sort of contested catch is not being completed.
Love has also had to adjust his internal clock within the pocket on the fly. For three games, Love often had the luxury of being able to go through his progressions and take what was available without having to force anything because the offensive line gave him time.
Then, in a matter of just three days, Green Bay faced Detroit on Thursday night, and Love was pressured on nearly 50 percent of his dropbacks in that game. The offensive line continued to struggle in pass protection against Las Vegas and Denver, where combined over those three games, Love was pressured at the ninth-highest rate in football. Again, it’s difficult to be decisive if you don’t have time in the pocket or are worried about pressure.
“There’s going to be a couple plays that you want back,” said Matt LaFleur, “but also we’ve got to make some plays for him, too. I think we had like six dropped balls. That’s going to be tough to overcome. We’ve got to throw it better, we have to catch it better, we have to block better, and we have to stop having penalties that knock us back and put us in these obvious pass situations.”
With Green Bay’s inability to connect on downfield passes this season, defenses simply do not fear it. This has resulted in them shrinking the field, clogging things up over the middle and on more shallow routes, perhaps also contributing to Love’s indecisiveness at times because there just isn’t anywhere to go with the ball. The fact that the Packers also find themselves in obvious passing downs so often, with the defense having the matchup advantage, likely isn’t helping that aspect either.
Does Love have to be more decisive than what he has been? Absolutely. He needs to get back to letting it rip, and he and LaFleur will have to live with whatever the results of that may be because the current approach isn’t working. But with that said, for there to be a noticeable and consistent change in the performance of the offense, things around Love have to improve as well.
As LaFleur said just a few days ago, “indecisive equals ineffective.”