Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell sees poise, promise in Packers QB Jordan Love
Jordan Love's first season replacing Aaron Rodgers as the Green Bay Packers quarterback has been a little bit like Rodgers' first season replacing Brett Favre 15 years ago.
Love is tied for the third-most interceptions thrown in the NFL this season (10) and has completed a tick below 60% of his passes while the Packers have slipped from perennial NFC title contender to below .500 in the standings.
But Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell insists he sees a poise in the fourth-year quarterback that belies his inexperience. Love started one game and attempted 50 passes in his first three NFL seasons.
“I feel like he’s always been pretty poised really, just some of these connections haven’t - they haven’t been able to connect on some of the critical moments," Campbell said Monday. "I feel like he’s making those. He just, he looks pretty composed."
Love has 16 touchdowns and 10 interceptions this season for a Packers team that's hanging on the fringes of the playoff race with a 4-6 record heading into Thursday's Thanksgiving game with the Lions.
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He's completed 59.7% of his passes and has a quarterback rating of 83.8, both near the bottom of qualified starters. Will Levis, Zach Wilson and Matthew Stafford are the only quarterbacks with more than 100 attempts who've completed a lower percent of their passes, though Love has the second biggest expected-to-actual completion percentage difference (-4.4%) in the league.
Rodgers, a future first-ballot Hall-of-Famer who played sparingly his first three years in Green Bay and was traded to the New York Jets this offseason, went 6-10 in his first season as a starter in 2008, when he completed 63.6% of his passes with 28 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
Love struggled mightily in the Packers' 34-20 loss to the Lions in September, but has led Green Bay to wins two of the past three weeks. He engineered the game-winning touchdown drive in the fourth quarter of last week's win over the Los Angeles Chargers, a drive that was kept alive by a pass interference penalty on third-and-20, and has benefitted from slight changes in the Packers' run game that include more zone-read plays that take advantage of his athleticism.
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"Certainly he’s athletic enough, he’s got big arm talent," Campbell said. "And the run game has helped them with that as well, just for what they’re able to do, what they want to do. I would say they’re executing, he’s executing."
Hitting switches
The Lions held the Packers to a season-low 27 yards rushing in Week 4, but Green Bay has topped 100 yards on the ground in four of its past five games.
Lions defensive tackle Alim McNeill said the Packers have made some structural changes to their run game that have contributed to the success.
"They switched up their run game as far as like who’s blocking who, schematically," McNeill said. "They’ve thrown some read-zone in there, but there’s not too much going on. They are playing good, though. They’re playing good football, but it’s not too much different than what we saw the first time."
One major difference: The Packers will be without top running back Aaron Jones on Thursday after he was carted off the field last week with a knee injury. Jones has been in and out of the lineup with hamstring injuries this year, but is a three-time 1,000-yard rusher.
The Lions (8-2) are fifth in the NFL against the run at 89.5 ypg.
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"For the most part they’re no different than anybody else, they’ll have these principles with what they do in the run game and the play pass off of it, to boot off of it, and even if it keeps you honest, they’re going to want to do some of that," Campbell said. "Our thing, we can’t give up explosives. (If) you’re able to get some explosive in the pass game then it’s going to open your run game up. I think that’s the big thing for us is we’ve got to play this top-down. We can’t give up any of these chunk plays cause they are having some success with those."
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions ready for 'composed' Jordan Love in rematch vs. Packers
