{"id":733907,"date":"2026-02-06T17:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/733907\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T17:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:48:18","slug":"the-packers-offense-didnt-use-jordan-love-enough-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/733907\/","title":{"rendered":"The Packers\u2019 offense didn\u2019t use Jordan Love enough in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Jordan Love was a spectacularly efficient quarterback in 2025. Just about any stat you can find paints him as a quarterback who took care of the ball and got results when the Packers put the ball in his hands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">So why didn\u2019t the Packers do it more?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Maintained by consummate stathead Ben Baldwin, <a href=\"http:\/\/rbsdm.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">rbsdm.com<\/a> is one of the foremost repositories of quarterback data. Of particular interest to our discussion here is the EPA+CPOE composite, which combines the EPA a quarterback generates with his Completion Percentage Over Expected (CPOE) to generate a clean, simple number representing quarterback efficiency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Love did quite well in this number in 2025, ranking third behind Drake Maye and Brock Purdy. He was one of only 14 quarterbacks in the NFL to generate an EPA+CPOE composite of .100 or better. It\u2019s safe to call Love one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">But among the QBs that hit the .100 threshold, Love ranked just eighth in average attempts, throwing just 29.2 passes per game, well behind league leaders Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott, and Matthew Stafford, all of whom averaged at least 35 pass attempts per game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">A six attempt difference may not seem like all that much but consider this: the Packers averaged 6.2 plays per drive in 2025. Assuming a 50\/50 split between runs and passes, that means Love was almost two full drives\u2019 worth of passes behind the league leaders last season. That seems like a mistake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">How did things end up this way? A big reason for it is the Packers\u2019 commitment to running the ball on early downs. The Packers were comfortably in the bottom third of the league last year in early down passes, preferring to run the ball on first and second downs more than 50% of the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">That, too, seems like a mistake, and it looks even worse when you see how productive the Packers\u2019 ground game was relative to the passing game. The Packers had a terrifically efficient passing game, but their rushing game was in the bottom third of the league. They were sacrificing Love passes for runs that were going nowhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Fortunately, the fix here is easy \u2014 if Matt LaFleur is willing to change his approach. The Packers need to ditch the early down runs in 2026 and let Love loose. He has the receivers for it. Even with Romeo Doubs likely departing, the Packers still have an enviable top four in Christian Watson, Jayden Reed, Matthew Golden, and Dontayvion Wicks. And that\u2019s not even mentioning Tucker Kraft, who should be back early next season. Heck, even Luke Musgrave was relatively useful down the stretch in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Packers have no excuse for operating this way in 2026. Their lead running back slowed down dramatically in 2025. Their offensive line likely won\u2019t be any better at generating the sort of push needed to run the scheme Matt LaFleur seems determined to run. But Jordan Love will still be there, along with his bevy of pass catchers. It\u2019s time to put the offense in his hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jordan Love was a spectacularly efficient quarterback in 2025. Just about any stat you can find paints him&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,52919,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-733907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-green-bay-packers-analysis","12":"tag-greenbay","13":"tag-greenbaypackers","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}