Randy from Grand Junction, CO

Mike Florio thinks that each team now gets the ball once OT should go back to 15 minutes. Thoughts?

Nah. I’m good with the 10 minutes. If the team getting the ball second wants more time for its possession, stop the other team sooner, use your two timeouts on defense, or just take the ball first. As it was, the Cowboys only used 5:20 of the 10 and the Packers still had both their timeouts. I kind of like having a potential downside to whichever decision is made after winning the coin toss. That sounds fair to me and reduces how much the outcome hinges on winning the toss, which has been the whole point of the OT tweaks. The current setup might actually be the best option devised to date.

John from New Richmond, WI

Not the result we were looking for Sunday night but how could anyone watch the performance of Jordan Love and not see an elite quarterback? Leads the team to a touchdown to take the lead with under two minutes to go, a field goal drive with under 50 seconds to go to tie in regulation and another field goal drive to tie in overtime. Any one of those should have been enough to win the game. I’m not sure what more fans can ask of him.

They ask more because he’s supposed to have it all figured out in his third season at the helm. No mistakes, total command, FULL CONSISTENCY. Because in Aaron Rodgers’ third season, remember, he … (checks notes) … began the year 3-3, with two overtime losses.

Jake from Marina Del Rey, CA

Can we talk about the play where Love seemed like he was going to take off and run but then sling it back to Josh Jacobs. Just, wow.

Funny how that got lost in the madness.

Insiders, it appeared on Matthew Golden‘s long catch early that Dontayvion Wicks was the intended target and Golden veered from his route down the hash. Then he snagged a bouncing punt that could easily have bounced off his hands. Then he had a welcome to the NFL moment getting crushed on a rarely seen spin move. Then he ran backwards seven yards on a bubble screen. Is it fair to say he’s incredibly talented but has a lot to learn?

As I said the other day, he’s not a finished product. He’s learning the return game on the fly in Jayden Reed‘s absence, which is a risk the Packers are willing to live with due to the potential reward. The bubble screen he should know better. He must’ve run plenty of those in college. As Wes noted yesterday, via LaFleur, it was Wicks who made the route adjustment that created the congestion on the early deep ball.

Take away the deja vu all over again of Love turning the ball over deep in his own territory and their goofy inability to block for their kicker…and the Packers are undefeated today. Instead they’re 2-1-1. As good as both LaFleur and Love can look 90% of the time, the 10% they don’t is so bad it almost negates the 90%. MLF keeps talking about cleaning stuff up but then the same stuff keeps happening.

Errors that linger are frustrating and the coaches have to figure out how to correct them. That’s their job and while no one wants to see a repeat mistake, there’s still time to get it right. The 90-10 numbers you posit, to me, speak to how forever thin the margins are in this league.

“Though on replay, I thought maybe Prescott was trying to stop his throwing motion so the ball came out at a bad angle. There was a receiver he was initially aiming for, if that’s the case.” Then if it wasn’t intentional grounding, shouldn’t it have been a fumble?

Only if the ball goes backwards, which it didn’t.

Do you think the Packers’ propensity to allow blocked field goals will influence ML’s fourth-down, end-of-half, and end-game decisions over the next few games? I would think a 10% blocked field goal rate changes the math a bit.

They have to focus on fixing the problems, not working around them.

Mike mentioned that teams may be timing the snap better contributing to blocked kicks and that made me wonder if the kicking team ever tries a hard count to get defenses to jump early on kicks? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. Do special teams work on hard counts?

A few folks asked about this. Not to my knowledge. They vary timing based on a mechanical piece of the operation, such as the holder opening his hand. Tom from Keota, IA, mentioned the Bears picking up on a tell from the Raiders’ long snapper, which would negate any variance the holder is trying to achieve. There’s always so much going on at any given time, and I didn’t mean the other day to suggest it’s always one thing. In the case of the Packers’ two blocks, they were different. In Cleveland, two blockers got leveraged by a big push and weren’t anchored low enough. In Dallas, two guys each blocked one, leaving another free, instead of sharing responsibility for three rushers.