Why is everyone worrying about Jordan Love after the Green Bay Packers held Family Night?

Why is everyone worrying about Jordan Love after the Green Bay Packers held Family Night?

Family night wasn’t perfect, but please stop worrying about Jordan Love. You are Locked On Packers, your daily Green Bay Packers podcast. Part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. You are locked on Packers, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. Hey, I’m Peter Bowski and I cover the Packers for the Leap, a newsletter I would love for you to subscribe to. Follow me on Twitter, Peter_Bukowski. Follow the podcast on Twitter, locked on Packers. Like us on Facebook, subscribe to the podcast, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you find podcasts, you will find Locked on Packers, the number one Packers podcast on the internet and the show for fans who know what happened. They want to know why and how. Today’s episode brought to you by our friends at Game Time. Download the Game Time app. create an account and use code lockdown NFL for $20 off your first ticket purchase. I didn’t even think twice about what I saw from Jordan Love on Saturday night. And yet, when I went to look at social media, you know, I was not surprised that there was a bunch of Bears fans and riff raff talking smack about Jordan Love. Oh, he missed the, you know, the the golden throw and there was the the rail shot that turned into an interception. Okay, it was not a problem. In fact, what I saw was a quarterback who was consistently decisive and when he put his foot in the ground, put the ball where he wanted to put it. It was face mask football. Every time he threw it, it was right between the eyes consistently. There were a couple plays where he used his feet not just to run, though he did have a couple of those. Those are huge, by the way. One of them man coverage. Uh there was a lane that opened up to his left. He just took off. He got I think 20 yards. We didn’t see that last year from Jordan Love. There was a play where he got it was a little three-step drop. It’s not there on the quick game. He takes two more steps. He throws the ball on a deep breaker to Romeo Dobs. Those were the kinds of plays we saw with regularity in 2023. Quick game timing. One, two, three. If the ball’s not there, you go one, two more and you find a late in the down uh throw. This is a a vestage of the Aaron Rogers era because he liked to have those things timed out. Let me see something quick. Okay, not there. Reset. Make a throw. Now, Rogers did not always execute the footwork. That’s why it is funny to me when I hear people go, “Oh, the fundamentals. Oh, Rogers Rogers did not care about the fundamentals either.” In fact, in a lot of these cases, Jordan has cleaner footwork than Aaron Rogers. Rogers just has like one of the most talented arms we’ve ever seen. And I understand if you’re a Packers fan going, I wish he would hit those rail shots along the sidelines. Aaron Rogers always did. Yes, he was the greatest rail shot thrower of all time. No one has ever thrown a sideline go ball. Transition goes, three-step goes, better than Aaron Rogers. No one in the history of the football has done it better than Aaron Rogers. I get painted as an Aaron Rogers hater. I understand why, but I’m telling you that that is true. So, don’t freak out when Jordan Love misses a throw like that. The standard is not Aaron Rogers. It can’t be Aaron Rogers. He’s the best to ever do it. But that sounds like I’m making excuses for him. I thought overall it was a stellar performance from Jordan Love. Ball placement was good. Movement in the pocket was good. Now, the pockets weren’t always great, but the movement in the pocket was good. The athleticism he showed was good. Made a couple plays with his feet. That was good. Made a throw or two on the run. That was good. I saw what I wanted to see from Jordan Love. Would it have been nice to connect to Matthew Golden when Bo Melton is the corner over there against Golden? Yes. But Bo Melton’s really fast. He’s a low four threes player. You give NFL athletes a just a a one-on-one go with another player. If you’re a 4-3 guy, that 434 435 versus 429, you know, such that you believe that that’s his actual time. It’s not that different. And Golden did have half a step, which is what you would expect from someone who runs, you know, a fraction of a second faster than the other guy. This consternation over Jordan Love to me just does not fit. Now, I understand some people had some issues with the interceptions last year. Now, our pal Ed Fang from the Power Rank, he’s an analytics guru, he put out a little video over the weekend pointing out that interception percentage is a very bad indicator of future interception percentage because interceptions can be very fluky. and that the better predictor of how often you throw interceptions was actually how often your your passes become PBUS, how often the passes are contested by defensive backs, which is part of how often do you throw into coverage? That’s part of it. But then how often are you throwing in a position where defenders can make a play on the football? And what Ed said was he thinks Aaron Rogers is the best that’s ever done it. He didn’t say anything about Aaron Rogers. He thinks Jordan Love is going to have a significantly lower interception percentage this year. Something like 2.1% which would be a good number for anybody. So, they’re just to me there are only reasons to be excited about this offense. Reasons to go, hey, this offense can be better this year than it was last year. You add Matthew Golden, Christian Watson’s going to come back sooner than later. You have Jaden Reed. Savon Williams made some nice plays on on family night. By the way, if you have not heard, we did a little recap on family night. It was a little a quick one. go back and check it out. Listen to it. Um, a little 15minute guy on Saturday night. It should be in your feed. Uh, if you’re a subscriber, go check it out. I don’t want to rehash all of it. I wanted to have some more topline thoughts. I also wrote about it today in the leap, a newsletter I would love for you to subscribe to. But it wasn’t just some throws. There was some conversations that I had over the weekend about Jordan Love’s impact on this locker room and Albert Brerier echoed some of those comments in a piece from MMQB in which he called Jordan Love the Pied Piper of the Packers locker room. Now, that that is to me a beautiful turn of phrase. I love that. Um, but that tells you what this locker room thinks of Jordan Love. They are ready to go to battle with Jordan Love. And frankly, that’s all that matters. This team believes in Jordan Love. And I’m telling you, I watched Family Night going, I saw the things that I wanted to see because what I wanted to see was Jordan Love to use his feet to create positive yardage. Not just in the pocket. I wanted to see him break contain and go pick up some yards. Looks healthy. Looks great doing that. Is he ever going to be Lamar Jackson? No. I wanted to see the pocket movement. Now the stakes are different. He’s not going to get crushed by Lucas Vaness if Lucas Vaness puts Jordan Morgan in a body bag. So the stakes are different, but the subtle movement in the pocket and I the the point that I tried to make all of last year is the movement in the pocket stuff is quick twitch. We don’t think about it at like route running or running backs getting in and out of breaks or something like that. It is quick twitch to be able to put your foot in the ground, move, reset, and throw. And Jordan Love just didn’t have that snap. Just didn’t have that elasticity, that twitch in his game last year. But you go back and you watch 2013. You watch the second half in particular in 2013 and you want to talk about, okay, you hear from fans that are like, “Oh, well, the second half, it’s just that little mini sample size. Okay, what what was he doing? What what was the best parts of that?” A lot of it was subtle movement in the pocket, resetting, and making throws. That’s what I wanted to see from Jordan Love, and that is exactly what we saw. Now, on Saturday night when we were live, we talked about the future of this offensive line, or at least the the Jordan Morgan of it all and some of the run blocking issues. Let’s try and put it all together. Let’s try and figure out where this offensive line stands as we move forward. That’s next on Lockdown Packers. Time to fuel up and turn it up with 5-hour energy transfusion. And it brings the bold grape, ginger, and lime flavor of your favorite golf drink, minus the alcohol, into a quick, energizing shot. Whether you’re sinking birdies or just making memories with friends, this hole-in-one for your energy game will have you feeling right. I played on Sunday, had a great time, and look, that transfusion on a hot day, that those flavors hit. They really, really hit. 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I don’t rehash all of it. So, I don’t want this to feel like one practice. If you’re an everydayer, you know, I’ve been saying since March, since before the Packers drafted Jordan Morgan, you can go back, look at my tweets, go back, find the conversations we had on the show. I think Jordan Morgan is a guard. I have always thought Jordan Morgan is a guard. So, this is not, hey, look at a couple reps in one practice and decide he is something. No, I looked at three years of college tape. I watched I’m pretty sure I watched every pass set he took over the last two seasons at Arizona and I came to the conclusion that he is best suited as a guard. That is my conclusion. I can only give you my conclusion. The Packers think that he can play tackle or at least they thought he could play tackle. The fact that you can’t block Lucas Vaness and Kingsley Abari one-on-one as a bull rusher is problematic. What I said the other day was I think the Packers have a little too much dip on their chip when it comes to this move that they’re trying to make. Hey, Jordan Morgan, can you play left tackle, but also we want you to train at right guard and like we think we can get enough reps for you, but you have to be like Hermione with the time turner and the prisoner of Aszaban and and take two classes. It’s just like what are we doing? He’s not a tackle. Let’s not waste anyone’s time pretending he’s a tackle. You know who’s a tackle? Anthony Belton. Now, Baron Serell got him on a rep, but you can see the stopping power. Usually a boxing term, but like look at the power Anthony Beltton plays with. Now, he got Baron Serell. Bang. Stopped him. Sell was able to keep going. And Belton was kind of surprised. Like you could almost see like he was like, “Oh, I got to keep blocking.” He thought his initial punch would be enough. Credit to Sell to keep going. I think Anthony Belton, if you give him a little bit of time, a little bit of weight room, a little bit of conditioning, a little bit of technique, a little bit of film study, that guy is a football player. I loved watching his tape. He took me by surprise. Was a late riser in the process for me because I didn’t watch him until very, very, very late in the process. um someone that I I kind of not that I got tipped off that the Packers were going to take him, but I was just sort of like this is the last guy who’s been connected to the Packers that I haven’t watched, so let me do that. And then, you know, you love it when those those kinds of things pay off because then you’re like, okay, I’m ready for this. But then you have to in earnest and and I think the Packers will continue to give Morgan some opportunities here maybe through the next week. But the point of me saying I think they have too much dip on their chip is a way of saying you just have to decide. And at a certain point, you have to decide he just can’t do it and that it’s not worth more opportunities for him to get better at doing it. You have to just decide he can’t. And now I’m not saying that that’s, you know, totally done and and and asked and answered and and in a open and shut case. I I can’t say that for sure. I’m not even suggesting to to stop, you know, giving him those opportunities. That’s what I’m saying. You don’t have to stop doing that. But not today anyway, but at a certain point you do. At a certain point, he’s got to play a position because the guys who take some reps at guard and some reps at tackle, they have a name for those players. They’re called backups because starters don’t do that. Like Elton Jenkins in practice is not he’s gonna play some left guard today. He’s gonna play some left right tackle today. He’s going to play some center today. No. He’s got a position. If you don’t have a position in the starting lineup, you are a backup. And that is the problem. So, the Packers, to my mind, need to give Jordan Morgan every opportunity at right guard to go be the right guard. That is the best way to help him win that starting job. help the Packers save a little bit of face. If he’s the starter at right guard this year, Rasheed Walker is the starter at left tackle. He plays pretty well. You let him move on. Anthony Belton over the course of the season got some reps. Maybe he played here or two and you move on and and he turns into a quality left tackle, then no one is going to crow about, oh, you used a first round pick and a second round pick on these guys. No, you fortified the offensive line and you gave yourself an opportunity against the best pass rushes in the NFL. The kinds of teams you’re going to face in the playoffs, the kinds of teams you’re going to face in the NFC North. The Vikings can rush the passer. The Lions, at least when they’re fully healthy, whenever that will be, can rush the passer. The Bears less so, but the Eagles, we know they can rush the passer. The 49ers, when they’re healthy, they can rush the passer. So, you’re going to have to be able to pass block. Now, the run defense, not the best. Or, excuse me, the run blocking, not the best. The run defense was excellent. We’re going to talk about the the defense in a little bit, but for this team to get to where they want to get to, this offensive line has to be better than it was last year and better in the biggest spots because in the Eagles game, they just were not good enough. Part of that was you lose Elton Jenkins and then you lose Josh Myers as well, the Packers are much better suited, at least for the moment, to weather a storm like that than they were. But you also need to be better as a starter and then you have the depth. That’s how you really close down that gap between where you are and where you want to get to. I like Anthony Belton. I think he’s going to get more opportunities much like someone like Nazir Stackhouse. All of a sudden, you see him working in with the ones. Rasheed Walker had been missing some practices and so you saw Anthony Belton getting some work in with the with the ones at left tackle. That is something to keep an eye on. If he continues to do that, if that is something that happens, let’s say this week, let’s say Rashid Walker comes back, then that is something to take notice of because Rasheed Walker’s outgoing free agency has to weigh on the minds of the Packers. Now, whether or not they let that, you know, really take off in terms of the impact that it has, I I can’t say. I don’t I don’t know that I can think of a great example where you’re like, well, you know, this player was better than this player, but the front office wanted a better look at him. Usually the front office wins out in those in those opportunities, but that’s part of partially because the Packers seem to have a good relationship, Matt Laflur, Brian Gudakens, that it’s like, okay, we like this guy, coaches are saying this, and the Packers say, hey, we like these guys. and you find that ven diagram of hey these are the perfect players for both sides. Whether or not you can find those players in a given year, you know, who knows? The flexibility here to mix and match is optimal, but you have to give your guys a chance to succeed. We’ll see if the Packers can put that together. Uh there are some some unsung heroes, some undrafted free agents, some rookies, some young players, maybe a player making a position conversion that we haven’t talked about. I want to do that next on Locked on Packers. Have you ever decided at the last minute to head to a ball game with friends and family? Maybe it’s game day and you suddenly realize you want to be in the stands. 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Those guys look like football players. They look like players the Packers can use. Stack house in particular. End of the week getting some run with the ones is already in TJ Sllayton’s number. Looks like the kind of player the Packers really don’t have and really need. Brinsen played, you know, a couple different spots, a couple different alignments, even played some defensive ends to my eyes at least. Um, and so I think they like what they’re getting there. Stackhouse is going to make this team though. And those two guys, you’re you’re getting depth, you’re getting upside. I think I think Stackhouse has the upside to be an early down run defender for the Packers from jump. I don’t know that Brinen has the same sort of upside. I mean, he I think he’s he’s closer in that like Kobe Wooden kind of, you know, he can be a rotational defensive lineman for you, but that’s useful, too, because Kobe Wooden has not really played the way that I thought he could. Frankly, I like the tape. My guy Zack Blackerby from locked on Auburn was was telling me, “Hey, this guy can really play.” Just never clicked for him, unfortunately. Another player we have to shout out here. I I know that this is everyone’s every NFC North team’s favorite rep against Matthew Golden was Bo Melton running step for step with Matthew Golden. Now, Brian Gutin said early last week that when the Packers brought in Boone Melton, I think it was when they brought him in, not when he was in the draft. I think it was when they brought him in, they first considered that a corner at least he profiled as that sort of player. He’s under 190 pounds. The Packers generally like at receiver more like 195 or or bigger, but low 43s, explosive athlete. If you look at his relative athletic score, for example, he looks like a corner, not a receiver, certainly not a Packer’s receiver, but he could be a Packers’s corner. He moves like a corner. And there there were some reps, you know, I saw some people with different opinions on on what it looked like. Uh the one on the one at Golden at least I thought was a good rep by Melton. Golden still got open and Love just sailed it a little. That is something that is going to be about reps. Those guys are going to have to get on the same page. Remember how long it took Aaron freaking Rogers to get on the same page with Marquez Valdez Gantling on those deep balls. Those things there is more timing in there than I think people realize. But Bo Melton was getting some reps last week with the ones on defense. Now, is he ever going to be a starter for this team? No. But that is a player that is going to work his way onto this team and I think I think could make this team as a corner. I think in fact, if you had to predict right now, I would predict he does make this team as a corner. That is crazy. That is crazy. A couple other things here. Uh the defensive playbook is diversifying. Even in practice, they were throwing a lot of looks at Jordan Love and Malik Willis. Disguises, oh, this looks like all out pressure. It’s not. Evan Williams bailing back deep middle, hauling ass blitz packages. I mean, Jeff Hafley, the way that he described it is you would think they had a new defensive coordinator, like if you compared training camp to training camp. But you know what that is? That is a sign of a good defensive coordinator because expectations change, facts on the ground change, what your team can do well and what you didn’t even think, hey, maybe we maybe we should try this. You see the Vikings beguile your team, your really good offensive team with all these simulated pressures and drop into non-traditional Tampa and all this cool stuff. Hey, maybe that could be useful. Maybe maybe we could do that. I have to believe that’s what Jeff Hley was saying. And you know, there’s some conversations that I’ve had that lead me to believe that there there is at least some truth to that where they where they saw that they saw the Vikings do that and they were like, I mean, we could probably do some of that and then it became, you know, Evan Williams is on my show talking about we want to be the best disguised team in the NFL. Well, if you’re doing it in practice, like the Packers didn’t show anything that interesting schemed up. Not a lot of pre- snap motion, not a lot of play, not a lot of true play action. Though, they did have a really cool RPO off a a counter. So you’re you’re faking power or you’re pulling a guard around and it turns into an RPO where you re you know pre-nap postnap and the Packers hit it. Packers were a good RPO team last year. Those are cool wrinkles. How much does that stuff change with Jordan Love versus not? I don’t know. That was like the only cool thing where I was like, “Oh, the offense is doing something cool there. They tried to get Matthew Golden on an end round.” Eden Cooper ate that up because Edan Cooper is a monster. I was not struck by the cool stuff the offense was doing. The defense was doing some cool stuff and the defense was just winning. They were winning at the point of attack, run game, pass rush. And I, you know, I have to believe some of that is um the changes, the tweaks in the scheme, but I think some of that is they just have some good players down there. Those guys are healthy. Kenny Clark is healthy. Devonte Wyatt is healthy. In addition to Rashan, I mean, there was a play Rhawn Garry shot out of a cannon. This defense is more talented than people realize because everyone wants to focus on well, but the cornerbacks. But the cornerbacks watch spam the net guys are not open and and I don’t think that’s a a knock on the receivers. It’s good coverage because it’s a well coached team because Jeff Hathley is a really good coach because Brian Gudkin is a really good talent identifier. That’s what it is. And so for the Packers, I guess you got to hope that’s enough. All right. Uh we’ll be back tomorrow. Much more here as we get ready for the fun parts of the preseason. You know, the games, the scrimmages, the the joint practices, those sorts of things. Family night is a warm-up. It’s an apparatif. It is an ambush. It’s a cocktail. It’s happy hour. It’s a shot and a beer before dinner. I can’t do that anymore. Those are the days, but I cannot do that anymore. Um, so follow me on the social medias. Follow the podcast on the social medias. Subscribe wherever you get podcast. Locked on Packers. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we’re there for you. We’re also on YouTube. You could be watching me right now. You could be looking me dead in the eyes going, “Is he looking at me? Is he looking at me?” Subscribe so you can stay locked on Packers.

Jordan Love missed a deep shot to Matthew Golden, but otherwise thrived on Family Night. So, why are people — even Packers fans — freaking out about it? Plus, where does the offensive line stand after a tough showing from Jordan Morgan at tackle on Saturday night?

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Peter Bukowski, co-founder of The Leap, brings you a daily look at the Green Bay Packers year round with Locked On Packers! Go beyond the latest injury news into what you’re seeing on the field, how it works, and how it might change with new players or against a division rival. It’s the podcast for fans who know what happened, they want to know why and how!

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