Jordan Love has Matt LaFleur Packers offensive flavor at the right time

On November 29, 2024By Littum

GREEN BAY − The Green Bay Packers starting to give off the vibe they had in their 2023 stretch run.

It’s taken a while for a number of reasons, but coach Matt LaFleur seems to be figuring out who and what works best for his offense, and Jordan Love is taking better care of the ball.

The result has been three straight wins since the Packers’ bye, including Thanksgiving night dominant 30-17 win over Miami Dolphins at Lambeau Field.

All things considered — Miami entered the game on a three-game winning streak since quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s return from a concussion — it was Packers‘the most impressive performance of the season.

“We catch that rhythm, that flow,” right guard Sean Rhyan said. “The coaches can kind of see what’s working and what’s not working. We’ve got a core group of plays, core group of passing concepts that work and we just lean on them. When (things) stand still and we don’t get , what we want, we just go back to them to get us back on track.”

Winning three in a row, including the last two against San Francisco and Miami by a combined score of 68-27, doesn’t guarantee the Packers will play well in the coming weeks. But it’s getting to the time of year when teams want to play their best football, and the Packers in general and the offense in particular are heading in that direction.

The offense the Packers displayed Thursday looked more like the offense you might have expected to see two months ago, based on how Jordan Love and Co. ended 2023. There are likely several reasons why it has taken more than half the season to get to this point: Love had (and certainly will have) more growing pains to endure, as well as knee and groin injuries that limited him in the middle part of the scheme; the receiving corps’ collective case of the drops; and LaFleur needed time to figure out his pieces, including his new running back, Josh Jacobs.

What is becoming clear is that the Packers’ top three weapons are Jacobs (117 total yards and a touchdown Thursday), Jayden Reed (47 yards total offense, two touchdowns) and Tucker Kraft (78 yards on six catches ). Not that other players can’t have their days or moments, but those three need to be a big part of any game plan regardless of opponent.

Jacobs and Kraft were especially big problems against Dolphinsmainly on screens and checkdowns in the passing game. Jacobs’ night included a standout 49-yard catch and run on a checkdown in the fourth quarter that set up the Packers’ final, game-sealing points of the day, which put them up by three scores with just 5 minutes, 2 seconds to play.

“It was very ugly,” Love said of Jacobs’ jump cut, which left linebacker Tyrel Dodson stuck in the Lambeau turf.

Kraft did his damage with his signature run-after-catch on short, safe throws. He slipped some tackles and ran through others on a crisp night where the wind chill at kickoff was 18 degrees.

“Those are leaky yards and nobody wants to give them up,” LaFleur said. “Both of those guys (Jacobs and Kraft) are so physical, they’re hard to take down, and when you take them down, you feel them. Tuck is an animal, I think we all agree, him and Josh. It’s not just those two guys, I love the mentality of our football team, our guys, they push each other, they fight, they block and they try to inflict pain, which as a coach you like to see.”

Just as important as anything else is Love’s game, as the bye has also been noticeably sharper. He hasn’t thrown an interception in the last two games after throwing 11 in the first 10. He’s still taken some deep shots — he overthrew an open Reed on the game’s first possession and hit Watson on a 46-yarder in the third quarter — but the quarterback has been quicker to check the ball down than he was for much of this season.

In fact, he missed seeing at least two wide-open receivers downfield – Dontayvion Wicks along the sideline in the second quarter and Watson for a touchdown in the fourth quarter. Instead, Love opted to make quick, safe throws to Jacobs (for 3 yards) and Kraft (for 10) on those plays. Considering how costly several of his interceptions had been earlier in the season, it’s probably not a bad thing that, for now, Love is more often erring on the side of caution.

“I think he’s playing his best ball right now, I really do,” LaFleur said of Love. “He’s done a great job of taking what’s there, taking control when they’re there or taking shots when they’re there. He moves around the pocket really well.”

Said Love: “Sometimes you just make the quick decision, ‘No, I think it’s covered, so I’m going to move on’. Really just finding those finishes, getting the ball going. That’s really the key to success for our attack.”

The win sets up the 9-3 Packers’ big matchup next week with 11-1 Detroit in rare back-to-back Thursday games for both teams. Beat the Lions and the Packers would be back in the race for first place in the NFC North Division in the final month of the season.

But to do that, Love will have to take care of the ball and keep the chains moving, as he has since the bye, and the Packers’ running game (Jacobs and his offensive line) will have to outmatch a Lions team whose identity is built around toughness.

“I think we’re building a good thing on offense right now,” Love said. “We’ll get that rhythm and find that groove. You just have to keep being consistent. We’ll take it one more week at a time.”