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Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff Writer
The play will be part of Jordan Love‘s highlight reel forever — a 53-yard bomb the Green Bay Packers quarterback threw to Christian Watson on the first offensive play of last year’s Thanksgiving Day game on the way to an upset of the Detroit Lions.
The story behind that play might eventually fade away, but not for Mike Sanford, Love’s offensive coordinator and position coach during his final college season at Utah State in 2019.
When Sanford read that LaFleur texted Love on the morning of the game to say he had changed his mind and wanted to open with a safer play — only to have Love convince his coach to stick with it — Sanford knew it was a big moment for the Packers’ first-year starting quarterback.
“He stuck his neck out,” Sanford said.
And that told him Love had reached a critical point for any quarterback who hoped to become a star.
“He’s never going to be like, ‘No we have to do that,'” Sanford said. “But he’ll be like, ‘No, I like that, we should stick with it.’ I had those same interactions with him before games when we were putting together the openers.”
STARTING WITH A DEEP BALL!@jordan3love to @ChristianW2017 💪#GBvsDET | #GoPackGo
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/BArevnhjYs
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) November 23, 2023
From that point on, LaFleur knew what he had in Love: a quarterback who studied the game to the point that if Love were going to push back, he would provide sound reasoning to support his case.
If that wasn’t the moment that told everyone Love could be one of the game’s elite quarterbacks, it at least served as a strong suggestion he might soon join that fraternity.
“I think he just felt confident in the play,” LaFleur recalled during an interview with ESPN. “Whether I did or not, he’s the one pulling the trigger, so if he feels confident in it, then I’m going to let it ride.”
Fifty-three weeks later, with the Packers (9-3) making their return to Ford Field for the first time since that Thanksgiving game to face the first-place Lions (11-1) on Thursday night (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video), Love has not given LaFleur reason to think differently.
“Oh my gosh, he’s the best,” LaFleur said. “I think he’s really coachable.”
LAFLEUR’S TRUST IN Love was 3 1/2 years in the making — the first three in which Love worked as Aaron Rodgers‘ backup after being the No. 26 pick of the 2020 draft.
In meetings, Love listened as intently as any backup LaFleur has been around, even if it would not be until Love’s fourth NFL season that he got the chance to put his learning to work (save for one start in 2021 when Rodgers came down with COVID and had to miss a game at Kansas City).
As LaFleur has said many times since, he erred in that 13-7 loss to the Chiefs by trying to use the same game plan they had devised for Rodgers. The Chiefs countered by blitzing the shoulder pads off Love. Love completed 6 of 17 pass attempts for 30 yards when the Chiefs blitzed, which they did on nearly half of Love’s 35 dropbacks.
Two years later, when Love got another crack at the Chiefs — the week following that 2023 Thanksgiving game against the Lions — he shredded Kansas City’s blitzes. He completed 10 of 13 passes for three touchdowns when faced with five or more pass rushers in the 27-19 win over the eventual Super Bowl champs.
Since becoming the full-time starter, Love has completed 62% of his passes against blitzes with 17 touchdowns (tied for sixth most in the NFL against the blitz since the start of the 2023 season) and six interceptions, according to ESPN Research.
It served as a lesson for LaFleur and Love, though it didn’t come into play until 2023, when Love took over after Rodgers was traded to the Jets.
“He’s become one of the best that I’ve been around at handling all the protection stuff that we put on him,” LaFleur said. “It’s pretty remarkable, especially when you consider where he’s come from to where he’s at now.
“His mind,” LaFleur added as he snapped his fingers three times, “he can recall things, and he sees it very quickly on the field. Very rarely will he ever make a mistake in protection.”
No one knows that better than center Josh Myers.
“He was doing stuff not typical of a first-year starting quarterback last year,” Myers said. “He was making protection calls, changing protections at the line of scrimmage, in ways that a first-year starter just doesn’t do.”
EVERY QUARTERBACK HAS his own starting point when he begins to prepare for a game. For Love, it sometimes starts with a look at plays other teams around the league have used.
In a week with a Sunday game followed by another Sunday game, Love does that on Tuesday, when players are usually off while the coaches huddle in game-planning meetings.
It is not a day off for Love.
“I’m usually on my own while the coaches are game planning,” Love told ESPN. “I make a notes page of plays I see other teams running that look good.”
Love will then send those plays to LaFleur and his staff. Just how many of Love’s suggested plays make the game plan each week?
“Sometimes they make it,” Love said. “Sometimes they don’t.”
The best recent example of one that did was a 25-yard pass to Watson in the Week 11 win at Chicago. While LaFleur revealed after the game that the play was born out of a suggestion from Robert Saleh, who began consulting for the Packers after he was fired as head coach by the Jets earlier this season, Love had a hand in the planning as well.
“Jordan texted that play and said, ‘I think Christian’s matchup on a linebacker is going to be great, we’ve got to take advantage of this,'” Packers passing game coordinator Jason Vrable said.
That has happened more frequently this season, Vrable said.
“Maybe Year 1, he’s just trying to do his job,” Vrable said. “Year 2, right now, I think that communication, that growth when we’re talking about third downs or what we like, Jordan’s like, ‘I like that, but I like that one more.’ As opposed to Year 1, a lot of guys … just want to please people, as opposed to [saying] what you truly feel.”
If Love has become more assertive, since it worked in his favor last season against the Lions, he’s done it respectfully. To date, there have been no subtle shots about playcalling or game plans that haven’t worked out. And rarely, if ever, does anyone see him get frustrated with another player during a game.
In fact, Myers, who is one of Love’s closest friends on the team, could not think of a time when Love chewed out a teammate.
Not even behind closed doors.
“I actually haven’t,” Myers said.
In that regard, Love has differed from Rodgers.
“Yeah, well, give him, what, 14 more years,” joked Myers, who played with Rodgers for two seasons, “and we’ll see.”
When told of Myers’ comment, Love let out a hearty chuckle.
“I think that’s true,” Love said. “I was here with Aaron, but I wasn’t here with him when he first started, but he probably wasn’t the same player or didn’t react the same. I think a lot of it is, when you’ve been playing for so long, you demand greatness and want people to be locked in if they’re not.”
THERE’S REASON TO think Love might never change.
In fact, Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander said he has told Love he should be harder on his teammates.
“I try to get him to get some of that ‘ARRRRRRRGH,'” Alexander said with a scowl on his face. “I try to tell him when those receivers drop the ball, get on their ass.”
That, according to Sanford, would be out of character for Love.
“My favorite trait in any leader, particularly at the quarterback position, is authenticity,” Sanford said. “Jordan is authentically a real dude. Here’s what I see: I see the Packers have a massive fan base, and when there are things wrong, they just want to see their quarterback go rip Romeo Doubs‘ ass for dropping a ball that led to a pick.
“That’s not who Jordan is. Jordan will have the conversation, but he’s not going to go out of his way to make people think, ‘I’m really a tough leader and I can have the hard conversation.’ And there’s so much of that in football. There’s so much fake stuff.”
That doesn’t mean Love avoids confrontation.
“He’s a competitor, and when somebody is making a mistake when he knows they’re capable of more, I’m sure, in his own way, he will say something,” LaFleur said.
THE GENESIS OF Love’s ascent to quarterback stardom can be debated. Some might not think he’s there yet, even though he is tied for the second-largest NFL contract, thanks to the four-year, $220 million contract extension he signed in July.
But to those who think he is among the elite, the epiphany may have come in that 29-22 victory at Detroit on Thanksgiving Day 2023.
If the previous week’s win over the Chargers — a 322-yard, two touchdown game that included a 24-yard scoring pass to Doubs with 2:33 to play — was the moment things changed for Love, then the win over the Lions reinforced it.
It was part of his 18-touchdown, one-interception regular-season finish that convinced the Packers he was their franchise quarterback going forward.
“That was a big one,” Myers said. “I think that was right around the start where [the Packers] were really starting to take off. I think that launched us in the right direction and we’ve kind of been playing some good football since, for the most part. Big moment. Cool moment.”