Week 18 Picks - The Floor

As broadly as possible, the 2023 Green Bay Packers season was about figuring out how good Jordan Love was. It is, obviously, an important question, both for the present and the future.

Put a bit differently, this season was about establishing Jordan Love’s floor. While I think it was fair to expect him to be further along than most other first-year starters (rookies, etc.), he was still just a first-year starter and couldn’t have been expected to be a finished prospect this year. There should still be development between now and whenever he becomes a more finished version of whatever he is as a player. This year, though, we needed to see whether how good he is right now merited further investment.

I think Love has answered that question. Even if you don’t find yourself in the “extend Jordan Love as soon as possible” camp, I would have serious questions for anybody who says they’re not interested in seeing more from him. Because if this is the floor, well, just look at the company Love has kept this season

Above is the list of every time a Packers quarterback has thrown 30 or more touchdowns in 16 games (or a 16-game season). Basically, this serves as shorthand for the greatest passers in Packers history, and Love already has a season among them. If that’s the floor, I think we should be willing to pay the price of admission to see what may be on the upper stories of this house.

To be fair, the same list also shows the gap between Love’s very solid 2023 campaign and some of the true greats in Packers’ history. Love has received quite a bit of praise for this season, but Aaron Rodgers twice produced 50% more passing touchdowns in the same (or fewer!) number of games. Brett Favre threw 33 touchdowns in his age-25 season (the same age as Love) and increased his total each of the next three years. Even the 2009 version of Aaron Rodgers was a few ticks ahead of Love, throwing 30 touchdowns and running in five more while putting up about 600 more yards through the air than Love did this season.

I do not intend this as a disparagement of Love. Far from it. It should be a promising sign that he looks this good in his first year as a starter, and it’s a good benchmark by which to measure everything that comes after. If he improves, we’ll look back at this as a glimpse of what could be. If he doesn’t, we’ll have lots of questions to ask as to why. But now he’s laid a foundation, and we can see what he builds over the years to come.

To read the rest of this post, support The Power Sweep on Patreon or Substack.