Eleven blitzes, eleven completions. That was Jordan Love’s line against extra rushers in Green Bay’s 45-27 win over the New England Patriots on Sunday, and it is the cleanest answer yet to the label his critics reach for: game manager. Managers check down. Love beat the pressure, beat it deep, and has scored multiple touchdowns in every game this season.
His line, according to ESPN’s game story, was 23-of-29 with three touchdown passes, plus a 13-yard rushing score. The MVP chatter will fill the airwaves. The three splits underneath it are more useful, because each one removes a piece of the game-manager case.
Does the blitz bother Jordan Love?
Not on Sunday. Love completed all 11 of his throws against the blitz, which ties the most blitz completions without an incompletion by a road quarterback since ESPN began tracking the number in 2006. Pressure did not rattle him, and it did not dent the offense either.
The game-manager read leans on one assumption: a quarterback survives extra rushers by dumping the ball somewhere harmless. Eleven for eleven says he was winning those snaps, in a building that belonged to the other team. Eleven straight completions means the read, the throw and the protection all held up, snap after snap, with no incompletion to blame on any of the three. LaFleur described a quarterback who is “taking hits and he’s still dealing the ball.”
Yardage alone has misled before, which is why our Week 1 look at Love refused to take a big passing total at face value. The splits are the sturdier evidence. They also sit in a league where pressure is a real strategy; Brian Flores’ Vikings blitz rate is the extreme version of the same idea.
How good is Love on deep throws?
He went 6-of-8 on passes traveling 20 or more air yards, good for 235 yards and a touchdown, according to Next Gen Stats figures cited by ESPN. Six of eight on throws that long is a 75 percent completion rate on the hardest throws in the playbook, and it is the opposite of a checkdown diet. ESPN adds that it was his second six-completion game of that kind this season, and that no other quarterback has had one all year.
Look at the yardage. Eight throws, about a quarter of his 29 attempts, produced 235 yards. A manager’s yardage piles up in short, safe increments. Love’s came in a handful of big swings, and the other 21 attempts were never asked to carry the load.
The deep ball also explains why the blitz number matters. Blitzing leaves defenders in single coverage downfield, and single coverage is exactly where Love was winning. Send the extra man and he punishes it. Drop everyone back and the same arm is waiting. The 11-for-11 line is what that dilemma looks like on a stat sheet.
What does the touchdown streak say about the game-manager label?
Love has thrown or run for multiple touchdowns in all nine Packers games this season. ESPN notes that is the second-longest such streak in franchise history, behind only Aaron Rodgers, who did it in Green Bay’s first 15 games of 2011.
Rodgers won MVP that year. That hands Love nothing, and the comparison is a benchmark rather than a forecast. It does show what the streak measures. A game manager protects the football and keeps the score close. This run is about the scoreboard moving every single week, and Sunday showed both halves of it: three touchdown passes and a 13-yard score on the ground. Packers teammate Laken Tomlinson put it plainly afterward: “I feel like saying that he’s balling is an understatement.”
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What is the case against reading too much into it?
The strongest counterargument is also the simplest: this was a blowout. Love sat most of the fourth quarter, and Tyrod Taylor entered with nine minutes left. A big margin can pad a stat line, and 11 blitzes is a small sample.
Still, the streak covers nine games, not one afternoon, and the deep-ball split came from throws made while the game was still being decided. Green Bay also lost running back Josh Jacobs to a broken ring finger in the first quarter, ESPN reported, and he finished with five yards on four carries. The offense that scored 45 did it with its lead back on the sideline.
Stack the three splits and the old label has nothing left to hold. Facing pressure, he completed every throw. Stretching the field, he hit three of every four deep shots. Over nine games, he found the end zone more than once every time out, and ESPN’s own historical yardstick for that is Rodgers in an MVP year. Whatever Love is, a quarterback who spends Sundays avoiding mistakes does not describe him.
