Since we’re in a weird part of the season — where the Green Bay Packers have the opportunity to clinch a playoff spot this weekend, four weeks before the playoffs, but only have a one percent chance to win the NFC North even if they finish 4-0 down the stretch — I figured now would be as good of a time as ever to take a temperature check on the most important player on Green Bay’s roster: quarterback Jordan Love.
When Love signed his four-year, $220 million extension this summer, it was obviously a move that set the tone for the franchise moving forward. He was their guy. No debate.
The only hesitation came from the splits between Love’s start to his 2023 campaign, his first year as a full-time starter, and how it finished. Over the first nine games of that season, Love had an Adjusted Net Yards Per Attempt (ANY/A) of just 6.2. We’re going to reference ANY/A a decent amount here, so let’s just get this out of the way: ANY/A is a yards per attempt metric that includes sacks and sack yardage, while also treating touchdown passes like bonuses of 20 yards and interceptions like losses of 45 yards. ANY/A has a higher correlation to wins than passer rating or any other basic counting stat or efficiency stat for that matter.
After those first nine games, though, Love’s ANY/A jumped all the way up to 8.24, including his playoff efforts. For perspective, Love threw 23 touchdowns and just three interceptions in his final 10 games of his 2023 season, but he threw 14 touchdowns and 10 interceptions over the first nine games that year.
This begged the question: Which Jordan Love was the real Jordan Love?
Now, with an extra three-quarters of a season of data on hand, we can make a pretty good estimation — even if Love was banged up with knee and hip injuries at points during his 2024 campaign.
Over the last two years, the league-wide ANY/A for the NFL has been 5.96. If a player averaged 6.96 ANY/A over the last two years over 400 passes, that player is worth 400 yards above the league-wide average production. We’re going to take that sort of outlook to frame where Love stands in the quarterback debate, at least from a production standpoint.
Below is a table of the 32 most voluminous passers in the NFL over the 2023 and 2024 seasons, Love’s years as a full starter, sorted by their ANY/A Value (their pass attempts and sacks times the difference between their ANY/A and the league-wide average of 5.96):
As you can see, Love fairs pretty well. Overall, he’s sixth in ANY/A Value (+984 adjusted yards vs. the NFL average) and seventh in ANY/A (7.00). The only quarterbacks who are worth more than 400 adjusted yards of value above Love — who, again, also played through injury this season and started last season off slow — are San Francisco’s Brock Purdy and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, who won the MVP Award in 2023. That’s pretty good!
You can debate whether or not Purdy, Jared Goff and Tua Tagovailoa are more products of their systems or supporting casts than true franchise quarterbacks, but even then those are the only “game managers” who are operating as efficiently as Love has over the last two years. That’s also pretty good!
If you start measuring ANY/A starting in Week 11 last year, which is really when Love got over the hump, his ANY/A through 2024 jumps up to 7.92 from 7.00. Since the Packers faced off against the Los Angeles Chargers at Lambeau Field 13 months ago, that number is third best in the league among players with significant pass attempts, only behind Jackson (8.53) and Purdy (8.08).
So if you had any doubts about whether or not the Packers’ plan of building around Love is working, the numbers should put that to rest. From a production standpoint, 29 teams would trade to be in Green Bay’s position over the last year and change.