Focused Love Looks ‘Phenomenal’

It’s cliché but Jordan Love has been busy controlling what he can control, and that’s his work ethic and fundamentals as he gets ready to take over as the Packers’ starting quarterback.

Author:
Bill Huber
Updated:
Mar 20, 2023 7:14 PM EDT
Original:
Mar 20, 2023

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – For quarterback Jordan Love, every day for the past couple months has been like the movie “Groundhog Day.” Wake up, check to see if he’s officially the Green Bay Packers’ starting quarterback, then get back to work.

“He’s handling it great,” Steve Calhoun, who has coached Love since ninth grade, said recently. “This is not the first year that he’s heard the noise from him being drafted as high as he was and having a Hall of Famer in front of you. He’s learned how to deal with it year by year by year. The biggest thing I talk to him about, and we both talk about, is just being able to control what you can control. That’s your effort and the attitude.”

That’s right out of Coachspeak 101. Even Calhoun had to chuckle when that was pointed out.

“Control what you can control” is easy to say but, in theory, harder to put into action. Nobody likes career uncertainty, even if it’s become a way of life for the fourth-year pro who seems poised to replace the legendary Aaron Rodgers for the upcoming season.

“It does seem easy to say,” Calhoun agreed, “but when you apply it to everything in life, it’s not hard when it comes to football and being a professional quarterback. It’s been raining in California the last two days. It’s hard for me to go out and train quarterbacks if it’s raining, but I can’t get upset about it and be frustrated about it. I can only control what I can control.”

What Love can control is his preparation for what will be the biggest season of his football career. On Monday, March 6, he returned to Calhoun’s Anaheim, Calif., base to start gearing up for the start of the Packers’ offseason program on April 17.

Love’s diligence was obvious to Calhoun when he talked to Packer Central the following Saturday.

“He looked phenomenal. That’s a credit to him because the coaching points that Coach LaFleur and the other coaches there in Green Bay are giving him, plus myself, he’s actually working on those things every day,” Calhoun said.

“When he came out on Monday and threw, he said, ‘Don’t judge me but I haven’t thrown since the season ended. I’ve been taking some time off, letting my body heal, so don’t judge me.’ So, he comes out and starts throwing the ball and I’m like, ‘Dude, that looks great. Man!’ That’s really exciting for me that he’s taken it to heart to really focus on the details and he understands that those details allow him to be accurate and be a good quarterback.”

Some of the accuracy-driven details came from a to-do list provided by LaFleur at the end of the 2021 season. It wasn’t about Love’s right arm. Rather, it was about his left foot.

“When Jordan was stepping to throw, he was up on the ball of his left foot when he was letting the ball go instead of having his foot flat on the ground so you can have more balance,” Calhoun explained. “You have more balance through your delivery, and balance creates accuracy. He was up on the ball of his left foot so his heel was off the ground, so his balance was a little bit off and that would mess with his accuracy.

“My coaching point was, ‘When you stride into your throw, think flat left foot.’ So, the ball of the foot would hit, the heel would come down, you push weight to it as you’re transferring your weight from your back leg to your front leg and then you have balance on your throwing motion.”

The results? In 2021, Love completed 58.1 percent of his 62 passes with three interceptions and a 68.7 rating. In 2022, he completed 66.7 percent of his 21 attempts with zero interceptions and a 112.2 rating. That, obviously, was highlighted by his 6-of-9 performance at Philadelphia.

“To see him do it against the Philadelphia Eagles and they were having an unbelievable season and they were really good on defense, to see him throw the ball like that and have that confidence, I was really excited for him. Really happy for him,” Calhoun said.

Love has been throwing three days a week under Calhoun’s supervision. The first couple weeks were with a receiver standing at the top of the route to “knock off the rust.” This week, Love was set to transition to throwing passes to live targets.

One of them is longtime Chargers star and Calhoun pupil Keenan Allen, with Allen running Green Bay’s routes for Love and Love throwing Chargers routes for Allen. The Packers’ Romeo Doubs is there, too, and will be joined by Christian Watson and Aaron Jones at some point, as well, Calhoun told NFL Network on Monday.

From that perspective, it was just another day at the office for a season that will be unlike any other as Love will be tasked with continuing Green Bay's three-decade run of quarterbacking brilliance.

“That’s how Jordan is approaching everything with the Packers and the Aaron Rodgers situation and just everything in life,” Calhoun said. “‘Let me control what I can control.’ If he’s doing that every day in life then, when it comes to the football stuff, it makes it even easier.”