GREEN BAY (WLUK) – hard to believe, but QB-1 Jordan Love is already entering his 6th season in the league and his third as a starter for the Packers since taking the reigns over from Aaron Rodgers.
This upcoming season, Love expected to further become the vocal leader, while at the same time silence remaining doubters.
Did Love take a step back from year 2 to year 1 as a starter? Whether it’s yards, touchdowns, or INTs; statistically speaking one could make that argument. If fair or unwarranted, or maybe just a little relative bias – it’s stance that many have taken.
“I think there is a narrative out there that for whatever reason that he wasn’t as productive as the year before,” head coach Matt LaFleur said following Wednesday’s OTA session.
Both Love and LaFleur have questions surrounding that narrative.
“I’ll tell you we won more games than we did the year before so I ask people what is a step back? Everybody has opinions and things like that. Try to block that out and just focus on doing me,” Love said.
“Well, he missed significant amount of time and you’re not going to produce as much from a numbers perspective. Also let’s be honest, we talked about this we did have a lot of drops last year,” LaFleur said.
Whether or not Love took steps forward or backward when it comes to on-field performance, there is no question to those inside the organization how far he’s come as a leader since day 1.
“His first year when he was starting he was just making sure he was doing his job to the best of his ability. More so this year than I have seen in the past, up till this point he’s been pretty vocal and I think that’s going to serve us well,” LaFleur said.
“With leadership and speaking vocally to guys it’s always you have to be yourself, you never want to be forcing things or sounding like the message isn’t coming from you. Definitely something I have put a lot of work in since I have been here try to step out of my comfort zone and speak up but the biggest thing is just having those hard conversations with guys when something needs to get done and might not be getting done the right way,” Love said.
In the present and the future Love’s success always going to be judged upon those of whom he is following in their footsteps, and in Aaron Rodgers third year as a starter he won a Super Bowl.
“Never try to compare because that’s so hard to do. You talk about Super Bowl that’s the goal for us, talked about this last year that’s the same message this year. We are trying to win a Super Bowl so I am definitely trying to be the guy to be able to take this team and lead them to that,” Love said.