Green Bay Packers: Jordan Love Hand-picked for Matt LaFleur’s System

Many people are still baffled by the Green Bay Packers’ pick of Jordan Love in the first round, but how does he fit in Matt LaFleur’s system?

Head Coach Matt LaFleur and General Manager Brian Gutekunst ushered in a new era of Green Bay Packers football with the 2020 NFL Draft a few days ago. It certainly appears that their vision is to have Jordan Love as their starting quarterback at some point during this new era and they both seemed very excited to get him with the 26th pick, especially LaFleur.

There are two basic reasons that LaFleur would handpick Jordan Love to be his quarterback. The first is the certain traits that LaFleur likes to see in a quarterback which we’ll discuss in a bit, and second is how he would work in LaFleur’s run-oriented system.

In this excerpt from an interview with Matt LaFleur, he highlighted the most important things he looks at when scouting a quarterback:

So Matt LaFleur wants a quarterback with a natural and easy throwing motion that can stand in the pocket and deliver the ball under pressure. Well, those two things can be measured both quantitatively by stats and analytics or qualitatively from film. We’ll look at a little of both.

A few of the numbers on Love performing under pressure are encouraging, but others are alarming. First, he moves well around the pocket and does well to not get sacked as only 15.5 percent of his pressured dropbacks were sacks, about 3 percent better than FBS average.

Unfortunately, his grade from Pro Football Focus under pressure was 73rd in the FBS. Now, PFF grades aren’t everything, but it’s not good to be that low. Finally, under pressure is where he shows his most prominent trait, inconsistency. PFF charted him for eight big-time throws under pressure, ranking him seventh in the nation which is great, but he also had 11 turnover-worthy plays which was the 13th-highest in the country.

Jordan Love is not bad under pressure, but, as with many young quarterbacks, it causes him to make mistakes. Plenty of young quarterbacks get flustered when the pocket is closing in, but the fact that he still made a good amount of big-time throws in those situations is encouraging and he’ll have time to iron out the mistakes. Let’s look at him under pressure.

That’s him staring down a linebacker ready to lay a big hit on him and making a great throw to an open receiver. We’ve seen all-time great Aaron Rodgers make that throw for the Green Bay Packers for years. That’s the kind of things that Love is capable of. Unfortunately, he does this kind of thing too:

The easy throwing motion isn’t quite as simple to quantify, but an easy throwing motion would mean the quarterback has enough power in his arm to have a throwing motion that doesn’t take all the strength he has. In that respect, Love has the measurables that would make it seem like he does. At 6’4″ 224 pounds, he definitely has the look of a big-time quarterback and his 10 1/2-inch hands are the biggest of any quarterback drafted this year, which should give him good control of the ball.

All of his measurements point to the easy throwing motion and plenty of zip on the ball. That’s why one stat is extremely puzzling. His throw velocity at his workout was only 54 miles per hour, in the 38th percentile. So he’s got a great build and huge hands but he was below average in throw velocity. Throw velocity isn’t everything in what LaFleur wants though. So let’s go to the tape to see what his motion looks like.

Here’s Jordan Love throwing the ball 70 yards with relative ease:

And here’s a nice and easy 35-yard throw for a touchdown with a nice, quick, smooth flick of the wrist. Jordan Love under pressure is a debatable topic, but I think LaFleur found exactly what he wants in Love’s throwing motion.

So we’ve looked at LaFleur’s personal preferences for what a quarterback brings to the table, but what about how Jordan Love fits the Green Bay Packers’ brand new run-oriented system?

Well, we can’t know how well he acclimates to the playbook or how well he can make certain throws that go along with LaFleur’s offense, like throwing the ball vertically to running backs. However, there is one thing that we will know will be part of LaFleur’s Green Bay Packers and that’s a lot of play-action.

First, and probably least importantly, he has the speed to get out of the pocket on play-action rollouts and can easily make them scramble plays for positive yardage with his legs as he ran a 4.74 40-yard dash, in the 77th percentile among quarterbacks.

Now for his actual ability to run play-action. At Utah State, he was in the shotgun every single play. That’s not quite in line with what LaFleur’s offense will look like, frequently using a fullback and running play action from under center frequently. So in that respect, Love has no experience with this brand of play-action and will need to learn it.

Utah State did run play action out of the shotgun, however, and Love was not great. His adjusted completion rate was just 62.09 percent. That is not a great mark, but again, it wasn’t from under center which can typically be much more effective for drawing defenses in.

For possibly the only clip that exists of Jordan Love throwing a ball from play-action under center, we go to this video from the Senior Bowl practice. In the second play of this video, he draws in absolutely every player on defense and throws to a wide-open man in the end zone.

Maybe they’re all just really bad at play recognition, but maybe Jordan Love is just really good at fake handoffs. If you knew you were going to have to stop A.J. Dillon before that freight train got chugging you’d probably try to get a head start too, and that’s when Love will showcase his world-class fake handoff skills and beat the defense over the top.

Whether or not Love really is a wizard at fooling defenses, he is capable in these situations and has made some great throws on the run, which play-action passing often requires.

So, did Matt LaFleur and the Green Bay Packers handpick Jordan Love for their new head coach and the system they want to run? Probably. Most coaches, even the most analytically advanced, still go by what they see on tape, and Love has every ability to do the things that LaFleur wants in his film. Some of the stats could have deterred them from drafting him, but he passes the eye test in a lot of ways and Brian Gutekunst went ahead and pulled the trigger to get LaFleur his guy.