Matt LaFleur can praise Jordan Love all he wants, but Green Bay Packers fans are not stupid.
Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur keeps praising backup quarterback Jordan Love, even though these kind gestures are fooling no one.
This is Love’s third NFL season out of Utah State. Not only did the Packers use a precious first-round pick on a project quarterback, they traded up to get him when they still had Aaron Rodgers at the peak of his powers. Two league MVPs later for Rodgers and Love remains an infatuation for LaFleur, as well as a complete enigma for football fans everywhere. Something’s gotta give, right?
Here is what LaFleur had to say about Love’s final preseason game vs. the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I thought there was a lot of good things out there,” said LaFleur on Love’s final preseason performance vs. Kansas City on Thursday. “I always look at the numbers at the end of it and go, ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ I thought he did a lot of good things. We’ll take a look at the tape. I’m sure there’s always something you can clean up.”
The Packers fell to the Chiefs at Arrowhead 17-10 in their preseason finale on Thursday night. Love completed 16-of-26 passes for 148 yards and his worst pick of the summer. His quarterback rating of 61.1 was actually worst than the 69.5 mark he registered last fall playing at Arrowhead over Aaron Rodgers, who tested positive for COVID ahead of the Week 9 road game in Kansas City.
Spin is one thing, but the amount of picks Love keeps throwing in preseason has to be concerning.
Green Bay Packers: Matt LaFleur’s praise of Jordan Love feels unwarranted
Look. We all know what LaFleur is trying to do here. He is trying to breath confidence into the backup quarterback the Green Bay front office overdrafted in the first place. While Rodgers is going to flourish playing for any head coach under the sun, LaFleur needs to show he can develop players, just like what his former Washington buddies can do in Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan.
Although Rodgers was never going to play in the preseason anyway, it was imperative for Love to show signs of life that he could maybe even think about being the heir apparent in Green Bay once the four-time NFL MVP hangs up the spikes. However, Love is throwing too many incompletions and far too many interceptions against second and third-stringers for us to feel any bit confident.
Ultimately, this doesn’t really matter because he is not going to play very much, if at all, this season. If Rodgers gets hurt, the Packers are cooked anyway. What is troubling though is this is year three in the same offensive system for Love and he is not ever close to looking like a starting quarterback in this league, much less live up to his draft hype. This is not entirely his fault, though.
Love’s lack of development is an indictment of LaFleur on if he can win in a post-Rodgers world.
