2023 Green Bay Packers Awards: Game Ball, Lame Ball, Play of Year
GREEN BAY Wis. – The Green Bay Packers could have been playing in Detroit for the NFC Championship on Sunday.
However, they let their fourth-quarter lead in a divisional-round playoff game at the San Francisco 49ers slip away following a late touchdown run by Christian McCaffery and an interception by Jordan Love.
Despite the bitter ending, the 2023 season can be seen as nothing but a success.
The key question to 2023 was whether or not the Packers had their quarterback of the future.
They do.
Love's piping-hot finish gives them hope for the future and the freedom to use their five picks in the first three rounds of April's NFL Draft to build around him.
In another year, someone like Zach Tom or Aaron Jones might get the season-ending game ball, but this league is about quarterbacks.
You either have one or you don't. If you don't, you're in trouble.
The Packers aren't in trouble, so Love gets the game ball for helping save the Packers from NFL purgatory.
Here are the rest of our awards.
Game Ball: Jordan Love
There was perhaps no player in the NFL under a bigger microscope coming into 2023 than Jordan Love.
It was not fair to compare Love to either Aaron Rodgers or Brett Favre. Favre is in the Hall of Fame. Rodgers will be as soon as he is eligible.
Love was just trying to find his footing, and the road was bumpy to start the season.
The Packers sank as low as 2-5 after scoring a meager 10 points at home against the Minnesota Vikings in late October.
After splitting the next two games, Brian Gutekunst was non-commital to Love as the team's quarterback of the future.
Love entered the final 10 games fighting for the Packers' season, and perhaps his job.
All he did was take the league by storm while playing well in the team's biggest games.
Love and the offense spearheaded a three-game winning streak over the Los Angeles Chargers, Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs.
That winning streak would not be the end of the roller coaster that was the Packers' 2023 season. They lost the next two games to the New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
That left them with a simple message. Win out, or go home.
Love was brilliant in the final three games. He threw seven touchdowns, added another one on the ground and did not throw an interception. The Packers swept the Carolina Panthers, Vikings and Chicago Bears to return to the playoffs after a one-year absence.
Love came into the season needing to prove himself.
He did, and now a long-term contract extension is likely on the table to happen as soon as this offseason.
Lame Ball: Joe Barry
This might feel like piling on, but the reality is Joe Barry was fired at the end of the season due to a third straight poor performance from his defense.
Barry was an uninspiring hire to begin with after failed stints in Washington and Detroit. He did little to quiet those concerns at any point in his tenure.
Barry's defense never finished in the top half of the league in total defense during his time in Green Bay.
Perhaps the most damning moment of the year was allowing 30 points to the Carolina Panthers on Christmas Eve.
The Panthers had not scored a touchdown in the two games leading up to their matchup against Green Bay and did not score at all in the two games that followed.
A strong performance in the postseason was not enough to save Barry's job. He was let go, and the Packers will be on their fourth coordinator in eight seasons.
The upcoming defensive coordinator choice could be the biggest hire of Matt LaFleur's coaching career.
Pivot Point: Jordan Love finds Romeo Doubs late against the Chargers
The Packers were scuffling at 3-6 and looking at 3-7 in the face when they trailed the Los Angeles Chargers in the fourth quarter at Lambeau Field on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
A loss almost certainly would have put the Packers' season on the brink and add to questions as to whether they could commit to Love as their franchise quarterback.
Love and the offense put a drive together that covered 75 yards in just six plays that ended with Love finding one of his go-to guys, Romeo Doubs, for the decisive 24-yard touchdown.
Love's pass to Doubs put him over 300 yards, which was the first time a Packers quarterback had hit that threshold since Aaron Rodgers carved up the Ravens in December 2021.
Love's pass to Doubs was the start of a three-game winning streak that included wins over the Lions and Chiefs, two teams that will be playing on Championship Sunday.
Instead of having visions of a top-five draft pick, the Packers had dreams of the playoffs.
Play of the Year: Love to Wicks in Dallas
The Packers led 14-0 in Dallas but were looking for more points in the second quarter when Jordan Love showed everyone just how much he had matured as a quarterback.
Scoring was paramount. The Dallas Cowboys had one of the best offenses in football. They were even better in their home stadium. That 14-0 score might as well have been 3-0.
The Packers drove deep into Cowboys territory when Dallas defensive coordinator Dan Quinn dialed up some pressure.
The hope for Quinn was to force the young quarterback into a game-changing mistake. The problem was Love saw what was coming because he forced the Cowboys' defense to declare what they were doing by his cadence.
Once Love figured out Dallas was blitzing, he made an adjustment at the line of scrimmage.
“I was able to get to the check and I was just hoping that they stayed with it, didn’t check out of it,” Love said in breaking down the play. “I knew we had a great play on, and it came down to if [Dontayvion] Wicks was going to win on his route or not, and he did that.”
At the snap, Love dropped back enough to give himself enough time to make a spectacular throw to Wicks.
Wicks did his part by shaking free from veteran Cowboys cornerback Stephon Gilmore.
He finished the play with a nifty catch in the back of the end zone. The Packers led 20-0 and would win 48-32 in a game in which the final score does not indicate just how dominant the Packers were in an upset victory over a team many picked to get to the conference championship game.
Game of the Year: Love Outduels Mahomes on ‘Sunday Night Football’
This was probably the easiest award to give out.
The Kansas City Chiefs are what the New England Patriots used to be. They're going to be on national TV the maximum amount of times during the season.
They have Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid to help spearhead their team to success. Since those two have been linked together, the Chiefs have yet to miss a conference championship game and have won two Super Bowls, with the potential to add a third.
The Packers were facing off against all of that, and even more eyeballs on television screens due to the presence of American icon Taylor Swift in the stadium, on Dec. 3.
On this night, however, it was not Mahomes lighting up the scoreboard as he is prone to do when the lights are the brightest.
He was outdueled by Jordan Love on Sunday Night Football.
Love threw three touchdown passes, including two to Christian Watson to stake the Packers to a 27-19 lead late in the fourth quarter.
Mahomes threw one touchdown pass but also a costly interception to Keisean Nixon in the fourth quarter that allowed the Packers to take valuable time off the clock.
In the end, Mahomes had the ball with one final chance to try and tie the game. However, his Hail Mary fell incomplete as time expired.
Love and the Packers secured their signature victory of the 2023 season.
Solve Your Problems With Aggression
“That's how I coached all year, and I'll never not coach that way again,” Matt LaFleur told Mike Silver of The San Francisco Chronicle after the Packers' 24-21 loss to the 49ers that ended their season.
LaFleur was referring to a coaching style that Silver described as bold and unbothered.
Whether or not LaFleur had been aggressive enough was a fair question to this point of his tenure.
His most infamous moment was leaning conservative by kicking a field goal in the Packers' 31-26 loss to Tampa Bay in the 2020 NFC title game.
This year, however, LaFleur almost always leaned on the aggressive side.
The biggest evidence came in the form of the coin toss.
Starting with Thanksgiving in Detroit and with the game at Carolina the lone exception, LaFleur would take the ball whenever his team won the toss.
The reality is fortune typically favors the bold. Or as former Tampa Bay coach Bruce Arians said, no risk it, no biscuit.
The Packers didn't get the proverbial biscuit this season, but the team seemed to respond favorably to LaFleur's aggression.
That is a trend that could continue as the Packers likely will be young again in 2024.
