GREEN BAY — As a public service, we deliver this important factoid about Sunday night’s matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh: 

The game will mark Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers first game against the Packers, his team for 18 of his 21 NFL seasons and where he won four NFL MVP awards and led the franchise to its 13th championship with a win — over the Steelers, oddly enough — in Super Bowl XLV.

You know, in case you hadn’t heard.

OK, OK. It probably felt like you couldn’t avoid the Aaron Rodgers Bowl storyline throughout the week, even if you tried.

But amid Rodgers-mania, here’s something you may not have heard about this matchup between the Packers (4-1-1) and the Steelers (4-2):

Packers quarterback Jordan Love comes into the game having been better on Sunday Night Football than any quarterback in NFL history. Including Rodgers.

That’s right, Love has appeared in five games — including his brief relief appearance at Philadelphia in 2022 when Rodgers left with a rib injury — and he has completed 106 of 148 passes for 1,202 yards with 12 touchdowns and no interceptions for a passer rating of 122.6.

In his four starts on Sunday Night Football, the Packers are 3-0-1, including their 40-40 tie with the Dallas Cowboys earlier this season.

How he’ll fare against his mentor, we shall see. But here are three other aspects to the matchup worth keeping an eye on:

1. TURNED DOWN FOR WATT?

Whether T.J. Watt is best known in this state for what he did at the University of Wisconsin, or for being the player the Packers passed on at the bottom of the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft, is hard to say.

But there’s no debate that the Packers’ decision to trade back from No. 29 in that draft to No. 33 — acquiring an additional fourth-round pick in the process — cost them the chance at a Pro Football Hall of Fame-caliber edge rusher in Watt, the younger brother of J.J. Watt, whose 114.5 career sacks are only 2.5 more than the 112.0 career sacks his not-so-little younger brother brings into Sunday night’s matchup.

T.J. Watt went to the Steelers at No. 30. The Packers took University of Washington cornerback Kevin King, who dealt with a rash of injuries during his truncated Packers career. That wound up being the late Ted Thompson’s final draft as the general manager.

The task of keeping T.J. Watt at bay on Sunday night will go to Packers right tackle Zach Tom, whose play improved last week at Arizona after a painful performance the previous Sunday against Cincinnati as he worked his way back from an oblique injury that forced him to miss two games and leave two other games early.

“You play a guy like T.J. Watt, you’ve got to be ready for him. It’s going to be a great challenge,” offensive line coach Luke Butkus said. “Everybody knows where he’s going to line up. It’s going to be a challenge for Zach to get ready to block him, but it starts with our fundamentals, our sets, our footwork, our hands. He’s relentless in everything he does, so I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

Asked about the matchup, Tom said, “He’s got good speed around the edge, he’s got good countermoves, but the thing about him is he doesn’t really come out of the game. So you’re pretty much dealing with him all game. So you’ve got to be on your stuff pretty much the whole game.

“He’s pretty much got it all, so you’ve got to be prepared for him all game.”

2. FIELD OF NIGHTMARES?

For all the controversial things Rodgers said during his time with the Packers — publicly bemoaning head coach Matt LaFleur holding joint practices in 2019, criticizing the approach the club took to its 2022 game in London, or the countless opinions he shared on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesdays — Rodgers’ take on the Acrisure Stadium playing surface wasn’t outlandish or attention-seeking.

It was just the truth.

Rodgers was among several Steelers players who criticized the playing surface, which was so bad during an Oct. 12 win over the Cleveland Browns that Rodgers went so far as to call the surface “borderline unplayable.”

“By the time the third quarter rolled around, that thing was really beat up,” Rodgers said that day. “It reminds me a little bit of the field in Green Bay in the early years — but not until, like, November or early December where it would get kind of torn up a little bit.

“Then they went out and found an incredible field maintenance guy (fields manager Allen Johnson) that came over and helped our guys out, and the field in Green Bay is absolutely immaculate. But the field today got pretty torn up.”

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Steelers share the field with the University of Pittsburgh. And it could be even worse on Sunday night, because unlike that Browns game, which was one day after the Panthers played on the road at Florida State, Pitt had its homecoming game Saturday at Acrisure Stadium, beating North Carolina State, 53-34.

“It’s out of our control,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said. “I think they got it resodded, so we’ll see. I know they have a game on Saturday. So, who knows? We’ll find out when we get there.”

Special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia expressed his own concerns about how the field might impact the kicking game. Pittsburgh kicker Chris Boswell slipped and fell on a field-goal attempt in the Browns game.

“It’s been difficult,” Bisaccia said. “One end seems to be a little bit more difficult than the other. We’re all waiting to see what the field looks like, when we get there.

“When you look at the field from a week ago, it was really difficult to kick in as well as run around in there, but we’ve been under the understanding that’s been re-sodded and ready to go.”

3. REDEMPTION SONG?

The Packers signed cornerback Nate Hobbs a four-year, $48 million contract in free agency, believing the ex-Las Vegas Raiders cover man could go from playing mostly nickelback and covering slot receivers to lining up outside at cornerback and taking on all comers.

Through six games, Hobbs has been a disappointment. Some of it might be related to the training-camp knee injury he suffered in practice on July 31, which forced him to miss the opener against Detroit following surgery on a torn meniscus.

But he’s started the last five games, and the results have been uneven at best.

According to Pro Football Focus, Hobbs ranks 57th in completion percentage allowed (65.0 percent) among the 101 cornerbacks have played at least 100 coverage snaps league-wide. He is 74th in yards per catch allowed (13.8) and 89th in passer rating allowed (127.1).

In last Sunday’s win at Arizona, he allowed four catches on five targets for 87 yards, missed two tackles and was flagged for holding,

But both LaFleur and defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, a former defensive backs coach who has had some of the best cornerbacks of all time (Darrelle Revis, Ronde Barber, Richard Sherman) in his room over the years, delivered full-throated votes of confidence for Hobbs.

“I’ve been around some of the best corners, whether it was Revis or Ronde or Sherm,” Hafley said. “You have to have a short memory. I’m not going to lose confidence in a player; I’m just not going to do that. You’ve got to keep coaching those guys and you’ve got to keep talking to them and showing them how to improve, how to get better.

“They can’t lose confidence and we can’t lose confidence. That’s not part of who we are or what we’re going to do. So, we’ve got to keep coaching them. I’ve got confidence that he’ll keep getting better.

“He is hard on himself, he’s extremely competitive, he’s talented. He’s getting into the swing of things after coming back from his knee that he had. I’m excited to see him because he’s a fighter and I believe in him. And I believe he’s going to go out there and take a step forward this week.”

Added LaFleur: “Are there some rough moments? I think that’s one of the beauties of this, especially playing that position. You have to be resilient in order to have success in this league, and that’s what I expect from him. He will bounce back.”

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