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Packers’ Jordan Love Makes Strongest Statement Imaginable About What’s Possible

In routing the Patriots, Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love didn’t just look like a player capable of winning the Super Bowl.
Bill Huber|
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love celebrates after the victory over the Patriots.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love celebrates after the victory over the Patriots. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Green Bay Packers

Jordan Love’s timing for his 100th career touchdown pass was exquisite.

Love reached 100 touchdown passes at a pace just behind future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers and just ahead of Hall of Famer Brett Favre.

Rodgers won four NFL MVP awards and one Super Bowl. Favre won three NFL MVPs and one Super Bowl.

With the way Love played in the Packers’ blowout victory over the Patriots – with legendary Tom Brady on the call for Fox – he perhaps for the first time in his career looked like a quarterback not just capable of winning a Super Bowl but perhaps destined to do so.

Love, in a word, was dominant. Facing one of the best pass defenses in the NFL – Christian Gonzalez and Carlton Davis are one of the top cornerback tandems in the league and the Patriots entered the week ranked fifth in sack percentage – Love was 23-of-29 passing for 372 yards and three touchdowns, good for a near-perfect passer rating of 153.2.

“You’re witnessing greatness,” running back Josh Jacobs said.

That’s inarguable.

Under pressure, Love was 5-of-7 passing for 125 yards and one touchdown.

When blitzed, Love was 10-of-11 passing for 146 yards and one touchdown.

On passes thrown 20-plus yards downfield, Love was 6-of-8 passing 235 yards and one touchdown.

Some quarterbacks steer clear of premier cornerbacks. Gonzalez, a second-team All-Pro in 2024 and a Pro Bowler in 2025, is the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL. Love and his elite tandem of receivers, Christian Watson and Matthew Golden, tore him apart.

Golden caught all 10 targets for 164 yards and one touchdown. Watson caught 7-of-8 targets for 171 yards and one touchdown. Combined, that’s 17 catches out of 18 targets for 335 yards and two touchdowns.

“I think that’s just the guys we got on the outside going out there making plays,” Love said. “You know, it really doesn’t matter who it is. We trust the game plan. We trust that guys are going to get open and make plays, and they did that tonight.

“I still got a lot of respect for him. He’s a great player, but it’s the NFL. We see great DBs every week, and I think our mindset is we got to keep attacking and we got good guys on the outside that are going to make plays.”

The Packers’ 45 points were the most in a regular-season game during coach Matt LaFleur’s tenure and the most points scored by a visiting team against the Patriots at Gillette Stadium.

Love almost certainly would have had his first 400-yard game had LaFleur not let him watch the final 9 minutes from the sideline. He set a career high for passer rating.

“He’s doing a great job, man,” LaFleur said. “I can’t say enough great things about him. What’s even better about him is just how he is on a daily basis. Just coming in, working with him, he is the same guy every day, whether it’s a great performance like he’s been doing consistently or … he’s just the same guy. He’s the same guy that we got when we drafted him, and I think it’s a big-time credit and I don’t want that to get overlooked.”

Golden set single-game career highs for receptions and yards. It was his fourth 100-yard game this season. He became the first receiver in the league this year with a 100 percent catch rate on a game of 10-plus targets.

“Phenomenal,” Golden said of Love. “Just being able to play with a guy like that is a blessing. Obviously, a lot of work had to get put in to get where we are now. It all goes back to OTAs and training camp, man. Just seeing the way he’s playing right now, it gets us going as receivers just being able to play with a guy like that, we kind of feed off that. Whenever he’s going, we all going.”

Watson set a single-game high for receiving yards, as well. It was the sixth-highest output by a player this season.

“Can’t ask for much more, can’t ask for much more,” Watson said. “At the beginning of the year when we were going through not being the team that we wanted to be, he was still doing everything that he could to play his best ball and doing everything he could. To see him continue to stay even keeled throughout this season, whether it was a positive or a negative, you can’t ask for a much better leader or much better quarterback or much better driver of this offense throughout the season.”

Love entered the game with the ninth-shortest MVP odds at FanDuel Sportsbook. Now, he’s fourth.

After a slow start, the Packers are 6-3. They can’t run the football, though their 129 rushing yards against the Patriots more than doubled their season average. They’ve dropped passes throughout the season, though they didn’t drop any on Sunday. Micah Parsons still hasn’t played in a game.

And yet, they’ve won five of their last six games. Love is playing at an MVP level. He’s playing like a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback.

Facing the defending AFC champions, who entered the game ranked ninth in points allowed and with an unblemished home record, Love was the dominant force. Everyone affiliated with the Patriots, whether it’s coach Mike Vrabel or Gonzalez, knew that the Packers’ only hope of winning was Love having a big game.

Love didn’t just have a big game. He had his biggest game. He looked like an elite quarterback, a player capable of hoisting the franchise on his back and carrying it anywhere – perhaps even SoFi Stadium for this year’s Super Bowl.

“We talk about the same thing every time, we got to take a mindset of one week at a time,” Love said. “I think you want to get rolling, we always talk about that, we want to stack wins. So, we got two wins, we got to be able to regroup.

“Obviously, we got Minnesota coming to our house next week, someone who we lost to earlier in the season. So, we got to be able to regroup, have a great week of prep and go on attack that week. I think the mindset’s just got to be all complete focus and preparation on Minnesota and you can’t let one game kind lull you to sleep. It was a great performance tonight, but it’s all about getting back to work and having a good game plan. But, yeah, that’s what we talk about: Stacking wins, get rolling as a unit, and that’s what we did.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.