Jordan Love Struggles, Special Teams Gives Game Away

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Photo by Evan Siegle, packers.com

Jordan Love - Nov. 7, 2021

When Aaron Rodgers appeared on the COVID list last week, a circus broke out focused on his previous lie about being vaccinated, and subsequent comments about his bizarre methods of “immunization.” The storm around Rodgers dominated the weekly news cycle, even landing on “Saturday Night Live” but from a football perspective, the story was about Jordan Love’s first big opportunity. Unfortunately, head coach Matt LaFleur struggled to tailor the game plan to Love’s skillset until it was too late, and thanks to an unusually good display by the Kansas City defense, we didn’t learn very much about the young signal-caller.

Love certainly didn’t play well, completing just 19 of 34 passes for 190 yards, one touchdown, and one interception, but his situation was hardly ideal. While Kansas City’s defense has been bad overall, they’ve improved drastically over their last three games with a -7.7% DVOA (meaning they were 7.7% better than an average defense over that timeframe), and Chief’s defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo did not take it easy on Love. According to Pro Football Focus, the Chiefs managed to get Pressure on Love 28 times (out of 34 drop backs), which is an insane number. Sometimes quarterbacks, and especially inexperienced quarterbacks, create their own pressure by failing to step up in the pocket. In this game, most of the pressure came right up the middle as the Chiefs abused guards Royce Newman and Lucas Patrick time after time. There’s simply not much for a quarterback to do in that situation.

Matt LaFleur also didn’t do Love any favors with his play calling. When the Packers moved Love outside of the pocket, he actually had some success, and on the rare snap when he wasn’t pressured, he was fairly accurate. LaFleur needed to provide an extra blocker, or failing that, replace Newman, who may not be long for the team after his performance. The other clear factor for Love was his lack of chemistry with Davante Adams. Because Adams doesn’t play much in preseason, and because he missed most of this week’s practices on the Covid list, Love really never got to work with the Packers’ star, and it showed on the field.

Key Interception

Adams excels in his release from the line, and some level of chemistry is essential when getting him the ball. Adams isn’t running your standard route tree most of the time, he’s flashing open immediately, and creating space for himself. LaFleur may have been better served using Adams as strictly a decoy in this game. Instead, Love forced 14 attempts to Adams, completing just 6 for 42 yards, including a key interception at the Kansas City 24.

All caveats aside, Love still looked shaky the few clean pockets he did have, and without some heroics from Randall Cobb and AJ Dillon, he likely would have had a few more interceptions. Love had the strongest arm of his class, and he has occasionally shown it off in preseason games, but on Sunday it looked like he was attempting to aim balls instead of just letting it rip. Even when he made the correct read, his receivers almost always had to adjust to the ball. But the most concerning mistakes were sloppy errors, and there were plenty of them. The most egregious occurred when Love starting walking forward just as a shotgun snap came his way. Fortunately, this is an illegal motion penalty, and not a fumble, but it could have been so much worse.

Special Teams

Even with Love’s struggles, the Packers still should have won this game. Kansas City has struggled this year, but even a struggling Kansas City offense still entered the game ranked 6^th in offensive DVOA, and Patrick Mahomes is still one of the best quarterbacks in the league. The Packer defense played brilliantly, bailing out the offense and special teams time, and time again, including a phenomenal goal line stand after Malik Taylor accidentally touched a punt, giving Kansas City the ball at the Green Bay ten. Linebacker Krys Barnes deserves special recognition for one of the best hits of the year, stoning Chief’s running back Damian Williams at the one-yard line. The secondary played an outstanding game as well, with anchored by Darnell Savage’s best game as a pro and aided by Rashan Gary’s relentless pass rush.

But it was all undone by three crucial special teams’ mistakes including Taylor’s inadvertent touch of the ball, and two missed Mason Crosby field goals. The three miscues cost the Packers at least 9 points, and according to Expected Points Added, which also accounts for the cost of lost field position, more like 12.7 points.  Corey Bojorquez has been an outstanding punter, but he’s been bad as a holder, and botched the holds on the Crosby miss and block by failing to spin the laces.

Returns have also been terrible, as rookie receiver Amari Rodgers continues to routinely muff punts, and almost never gains positive yardage. The 3rd round draft pick looks like a bust. Compounding all of these issues, the special teams unit even had trouble getting the correct personnel on the field, as AJ Dillon had to sprint on at the last second on a late punt. Special Teams Coordinator Maurice Drayton took over for Shawn Mennenga, who ran one of the worst special teams units in team history. Drayton has something managed to make things worse.

The Packers will get Aaron Rodgers back, likely this week. Their defense will improve as players get healthy. The offensive line will improve when David Bakhtiari returns. But if they fail to do something about special teams, it will cost them come playoff time. It may have already cost them the NFC’s top seed.