Acme Packing Company
The brains of football fans should be studied for science. Maybe we should not just limit it to fans, but perhaps anyone in and around the game at all. In Sunday’s game against the New York Giants, Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love managed to get his left shoulder crushed by a defender after deciding not to slide and had to go back to the locker room temporarily. In came backup Malik Willis and, predominantly off the back of the running game, he led the Packers on the remainder of the touchdown drive, which included both a key third down conversion on a read option keeper and a rather insane touchdown pass that involved a very impressive catch by Christian Watson.
This is good and fun and also quite important for the Packers, who ended up winning the game by seven points, but it also led to predictably stupid takes on the internet.
This particular tweet does not say explicitly say it, but you’d have to be a toddler to not follow the implication here. Of course, Sherman is committed to the “Jordan Love needs to be better” take on a professional level, so one could assume he may not be approaching the situation with the type of objectivity in takesmanship that one would like.
Still, this isn’t even about Richard Sherman. It’s not even really about the fans, some of whom will always inevitably clamor for the backup quarterback unless the starter is playing at a legitimate MVP level, and even sometimes then. No one ever sees the backup quarterback, so he could be anything. He could even be a boat!
Let’s acknowledge that Malik Willis has done an admirable job as Love’s backup going back to last season, doing everything Green Bay could ask for and more. But let’s also be serious: Jordan Love isn’t the problem. He’s the solution.
Love was almost perfect yesterday. His biggest offense was just not sliding and getting his non-throwing shoulder banged up. That didn’t slow him down at all, though. PFF gave him the highest single-game grade for his entire career at 93.6, even higher than his masterclass against Dallas in the 2023 playoffs. His stat line doesn’t look as impressive, but in case you missed the game yesterday, his wide receivers had a terrible case of the drops and it really crushed his headline numbers.
Our Dusty Evely gives Love the most minimal amount of boost here (i.e. not adding in any YAC), which I think is completely fair if you don’t have the tracking data handy. This also doesn’t include any potential future production or touchdowns from those drives — a few of those drops were on 3rd down, including a Doubs drop on the very first drive on 3rd-and-11 and a Watson drop on a deep ball on 3rd-and-2 in the third quarter. Using ANY/A, Love was at 8.42 with the actual results of the game. Sam Darnold currently leads the NFL at 8.40. If the Packers receivers...
