lupedafiasco wrote: ↑22 Apr 2025 22:10
Anyone have Packers News access and want to post the article from Silverstein? There was a terrific podcast that gave some of it yesterday (
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p ... 0704510196) but it has Silverstein sitting in with Gutenbumst evaluating players from this class, goes into what the Packers war room looks like, and what Gutenbumst saw when evaluating Love.
I thought it was a really good podcast and interesting to hear what the war room is like for the Packers. It sounds super advanced which I found interesting.
Inside the mind of Packers GM Brian Gutekunst when he drafted Jordan Love 5 years ago
Tom Silverstein
GREEN BAY − It has been five years since Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst sat in his living room and made quarterback Jordan Love the 26th pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
It was hard for Gutekunst to hear all the outside noise surrounding the controversial pick with so many people in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was all over social media, though. Few could understand why he would take Love when future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers wasn’t showing any sign of decline.
What possibly could he have seen in Love to make him spend a first-round pick on him?
Now entering his third year as the Packers’ starter, Love has gone 18-14, leading the Packers to two straight playoff berths. But he’s coming off a year in which he didn’t take the kind of step expected after a brilliant end to the 2023 season.
It might have been the Week 1 torn medial collateral ligament that sidelined him two games and nagged him the rest of the season, or the 30-plus passes his receivers dropped that resulted in a decline in yards and touchdowns and an increase in interception rate.
Or it could be more than that. Maybe Love won't become the franchise player they thought he would be.
Whatever the case, what happened last season has not changed opinions inside Packers headquarters about Love’s future and it hasn’t made Gutekunst second-guess what he saw when he studied hours of video from Love’s three seasons at Utah State.
It’s why the eighth-year GM has agreed to go through some of Love’s tape from his college days to explain what the Packers saw in him — and why they see the same potential for greatness now as they did then.
“He’s got 35 or 36 games under his belt with the playoff games, and you really do need to go through these things and see him like we saw him for the first time,” Gutekunst said. “When you see him again, you just get really excited. Obviously, he’s got more out there for him, and I think he’s excited to go after that.”
Evaluating Jordan Love during a pandemic
For the second straight year, Gutekunst will execute his picks from the luxury of the Packers’ massive draft room, which was added when a new wing of offices for the coaching and personnel staffs was built on the east side of the stadium.
It’s a far cry from his living room.
It’s as big as a hotel ballroom and one side wall is devoted entirely to the draft board, which is covered to make sure a visitor doesn’t see how the Packers have ranked this year’s college prospects.
A forward wall and adjacent side wall feature massive video screens you might expect to see in a Las Vegas casino. Love’s portrait along with his relevant physical testing numbers, body measurements, mental test results and athletic scores take up a quarter of the screen and a Love play from 2018 is cued up on the rest.
The side video board has detailed statistics of Love’s three seasons at Utah State.
This is exactly how Gutekunst and his staff would study Love if he were in this year's draft class. The video Gutekunst is about to show is the same he studied five years ago.
Love’s positive traits include ‘cheetah head’ and high-point release
“You can see this right here, you see how loose he is, right?” Gutekunst said as he runs through a series of plays. “Watch how still his head is when he throws. I think our coaches called it, at the time, ‘cheetah head.’ It didn’t move. He didn't move his head when he threw it. He's just so fluid in his arm.
“Those things jump out at you, right? And he’s tall: 6-4, 220 pounds. And he’s got a huge hand. And then you saw this stuff all over the tape.”
On the screen are passes Love whistles down field to streaking receivers for big gains. In 2018, under offensive coordinator David Yost, he threw for 3,567 yards and 32 touchdowns with six interceptions, and Love is throwing some of the same passes he has thrown over the past two seasons in Green Bay;
He rips a ball 32 yards down the seam between two defenders against San Jose State as though he’s connecting with Jayden Reed. He lays a deep pass down the middle against Colorado State, where it easily could be Christian Watson splitting two defenders for a 41-yard touchdown. And against Fresno State, he connects on the classic Tucker Kraft skinny post to his favorite receiver in 2019, Siaosi Mariner.
Gutekunst pulls up another play that’s filmed from behind the defense. Love, whose arms are 32⅝-inches long, has his hand extended high as he releases a ball down the middle. Considering his height, arm length and hand size, the ball is more than 7 feet above the ground when it’s released.
“You can see, how he stood so tall in the pocket and his release point was there,” Gutekunst said, using his mouse to highlight where the ball is when Love lets it go. “So, you talk about some guy who is 6-1 and releases it from his shoulder. He (Love) is not one of those. He’s a classic, loose-armed, high-point release (thrower).
“There is nothing you’re seeing that says to you, ‘That might hold him back.’”
Gutekunst runs two plays on the screen that show Love attacking the hole between cornerback and safety in Cover 2 and Cover 3 defenses. In a 2019 game against Wyoming, he drops back near the far hash mark and drives a ball that would have been picked off if not thrown hard and accurately. It goes for an 80-yard touchdown.
“That’s Cover 2 here, and he’s just hitting the hole,” Gutekunst said. “It’s a hole shot. From the far hash of the college (game). Obviously, our hashes are closer. You see a quarterback in college throw from the far hash like that, it’s arm talent, right?”
Arm strength and footwork allowed Love to throw lasers on the run
Another aspect of Love’s game the Packers valued was his ability to throw on the move. Gutekunst pulled up a couple of plays where Love escapes pressure and throws lasers to the sideline or meteors down the boundary.
Against New Mexico in ‘19, he escapes pressure to the right and, without stopping to plant his feet, zings a ball 40 yards downfield to Mariner, who makes a one-handed grab for a big gain. Like his predecessors, Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre, Love has the arm strength and footwork to throw on the move.
“But can you pull the trigger at any moment?” Gutekunst asks. “No matter where his hips or feet are, does he have the arm to do that, or is he one of those guys who really has to set up? Well, he’s so loose with his arm, he’s never had any issue with that.”
Gutekunst also wants to show that Love doesn’t have to sling the ball to be successful. He pulls up two plays where Love throws between the linebackers and the secondary. Those are throws he’ll have to continue making to be successful in the NFL.
“It would get him in trouble from time to time, but he’s not afraid of the layered throw where he goes over the second level and in front of the third,” Gutekunst said. “A lot of quarterbacks have a really hard mental time making those throws. I don’t think it’s ever bothered him.”
Love made some throws as a senior that he shouldn’t have
Gutekunst agreed before the session started that he would show some of the bad plays Love had in ’19 that caused some scouts to wonder if he had the makeup to be a great player. In addition to watching every throw he made at Utah State, he and vice president of player personnel Jon-Eric Sullivan traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to see him face LSU in 2019.
Love had four new starters on the offensive line and was without five of his top six pass catchers from the previous year. He wound up leading the nation in interceptions with 17 but still managed to throw for 3,402 yards and 20 touchdowns.
Say what you will about playing in a different system, not having good protection, and trying to make something happen, but there is video evidence of him making too many throws he shouldn’t have made.
In the loss to LSU, he threw three interceptions. None of them were atrocious. Future first-round draft pick cornerback Derek Stingley and second-round safety Grant Delpit stole the ball from Utah State receivers on reasonably well-thrown balls.
But in a 42-6 loss, he threw for just 130 yards.
The interceptions weren’t all because he was trying to make something happen. There were numerous instances when he didn’t see a defender and threw the ball right to him. After throwing just two interceptions in his last 10 games for the Packers in ’23, he threw one in each of his first eight games in ’24.
Gutekunst cues up a play in which a Nevada cornerback drops off his receiver in zone coverage and steps in front of Love’s pass to a different receiver. He should have read the coverage better and not forced the ball down the field.
Against BYU, he doesn’t see a middle linebacker drop into coverage and throws it right into his chest. From his own 6-yard line against Wyoming, he inexplicably throws 5 yards over the middle into double coverage. The ball is tipped, intercepted and returned for a touchdown.
Against New Mexico, he escapes the rush and then throws a duck off his back foot that is easily intercepted.
“These things are correctable,” Gutekunst said. “If you’re not seeing the defense or something like that, I think those are a little more concerning than if your accuracy is off. He’s trying to make something happen and these aren’t good decisions. But he’s competing.”
Love showed the poise in college that serves him well in the NFL
One of the plays that solidified their belief in Love’s character was an interception he threw against BYU. He was drilled in the back as he threw, causing the ball to sail short and get picked off at the 8-yard line. Flat on his face at the 38-yard line, Love got up and caught the defender at the opposite 25, slapping at the ball and nearly causing a fumble.
Love was sacked 20 times in ’19, but it could have been much worse. Something Gutekunst and his staff saw then and have continued to see since he took over the starting job in Green Bay is that he doesn’t take many sacks.
As he goes through more video, he points out how Love doesn’t duck or turn his head or hold onto the ball when he has pressure in his face. Like any quarterback, he’s better when he can step into his throws, but his ability to release the ball quickly with someone in his face makes him more difficult to sack.
It served him exceptionally well in 2023 when he seemed to make any throw he wanted, and not so well in ’24 when he too often thought he could muscle a throw through the defense.
“One of the things we look for in quarterbacks — and Matt (LaFleur) is really, really big on this — when a guy is coming down on him, he’s going to have to get hit,” Gutekunst said. “You can’t flinch. There were times he’d get hit and his head would still be right there. A lot of guys will torque their heads. He wouldn’t flinch at all.”
What is a ‘loose arm’ anyway?
He talks again about Love’s loose arm.
Asked how he would define a loose arm, Gutekunst points to workouts at the NFL scouting combine where they put quarterbacks to the test with deep throws. Love’s workout tape was outstanding.
Gutekunst puts it up on the screen and the first shot is a close-up of Love holding the ball. His 10½-inch hands were the biggest at the 2020 combine and bigger than both Favre’s (10⅜) and Rodgers’ (10⅛). His thumb and forefinger have the ball in a vise lock while his other fingers are clamped onto the laces.
“You can see how his hand covers the ball,” Gutekunst said. “It just engulfs the ball.”
Once the combine was over, Gutekunst had LaFleur and members of his staff conduct Zoom interviews with Love to get to know him. Gutekunst has video of a combine interview and Love seems relaxed and unfazed by the questions he’s being asked.
Gutekunst said LaFleur quickly jumped on the Love bandwagon. Then it was a matter of whether to pick him if he was available.
The Packers moved up from No. 30 to No. 26 through a trade with Miami, giving them the option of taking a much-needed receiver or Love. When San Francisco moved up one spot ahead of the Packers and took a receiver the Packers really liked — Arizona State’s Brandon Aiyuk — Gutekunst felt he couldn’t wait to take Love.
“One thing from my training is you only get so many shots at these guys,” Gutekunst said. “And if we're going to be a good team, and you're going to be picking in the 20s, hopefully most of the time, you may never get a shot at these guys.
“We had no idea what the reaction was going to be and how it was all going to play out.”
Five years later, it’s still playing out. Love is signed to a $220 million contract and the Packers are counting on him to bounce back from an average season. They did the homework, now it’s time to see if all the potential they saw in Love becomes reality.
