And if you want a colorful description of what the 25-year-old quarterback has become this season for the Green Bay Packers, coach Matt LaFleur gave me one, as the team buses made their way to the airport to get the group back to Wisconsin.
“F—ing stud,” LaFleur says.
Hard to argue.
If Love wasn’t perfect Sunday, I’ll leave it to you to pick apart what we all saw during Green Bay’s 48–32 rout of the Dallas Cowboys (and yes, it was a rout, even if LaFleur taking his foot off the gas created a scary moment or two at the end). Love’s passer rating actually fell just 1.1 points short of perfect, at 157.2, and his results on the eye test were pretty much right there, too. He connected on 16 of 21 attempts for 272 yards, three touchdowns and no picks.
He made throws. What was probably his worst throw of the afternoon went for a 38-yard touchdown. He had everything working, and looked every bit worthy of the throne he inherited from Aaron Rodgers last spring.
And his best play of the day vividly illustrated the level at which Love is operating right now, which is a healthy distance from where he was even at the beginning of the year. It came on a third-and-7 from the Dallas 20, with the Packers up 14–0 with 3:23 left before halftime.
First, LaFleur asked for, and Love gave him, the play call for the situation. Then, as Love approached the line, he identified a zero blitz and adjusted the protection to keep extra blockers in to combat it. After that, he stood in the face of a rush he knew would probably get to him, and with Markquese Bell coming free and leaping at him to close down his throwing window and make it impossible for him to step into the throw, Love flicked his wrist and dropped a dime to Dontayvion Wicks right down the middle of the end zone for a 20-yard score.
With that strike, the game was effectively over.
“He saw a zero blitz right away, maxed it up, and Tucker [Kraft] did a great job, the O-line did a great job, and he allowed the routes to work because usually you can’t hold up that well when somebody all-outs you,” LaFleur says. “They did, and that allowed him to get that extra hitch—and then the catch by Wicks was a hell of a play.”
And a pretty wild throw?
“Totally insane throw,” LaFleur continues.
The kind that very few quarterbacks could make?
“He is playing at such a high level,” LaFleur answered. “Like, he is playing at an MVP level.”
Which was, interestingly enough, just as vividly illustrated by what may have been, again, his worst throw of the afternoon.
You may remember in Week 1, when rookie tight end Luke Musgrave came impossibly open for a 37-yard gain against the Bears. The play, it turns out, is designed to spring him that way, and as such the Packers use it sparingly—and had tucked it away completely since. So when I saw Musgrave come stupid open again against Dallas, the same way he had against Chicago, I had to ask LaFleur about it.
“That was the same play, buddy,” the coach says.
Turns out, the Packers put it back in this week. But that’s not the end of it. The snap before Green Bay ran it, LaFleur actually had it called. Love didn’t like the look, checked out of it, and Aaron Jones broke loose for 27 yards. Afterward, Love gave his coach a look.
“He was signaling over that he wanted the same play call again,” LaFleur says. “So we called it.”
Love wound up underthrowing Musgrave pretty badly. But the tight end was so wide open—because it was the right call at the right time—that he could wait for it at the 15, gather it and sprint to the end zone for six without incident.
“There’s a lot of trust there, I would say, between myself [and] him,” LaFleur says. “It’s been so much fun to be a part of this journey with him. To see how far he’s come, I couldn’t be happier for him.”
And LaFleur’s not alone.
Before all this growth that’s become as obvious to the rest of us as it is to a football coach, there were a lot of Packers people pouring into Love, and investing in his development and, as a result, rooting for him. Because as they worked with him, they became more and more convinced that they had not just the right player, but also the right person—a kid LaFleur described to GM Brian Gutekunst before the 2020 draft as “just a very likable dude.”
“And I think that’s important from that position to see that love, and just to see how he’s worked to get to where he is now from where he was,” LaFleur said. “He’s done it, man. He’s done it.”
Which, considering how high the bar is at that position in that place, is pretty remarkable.
