Is Jordan Love to Blame?

No.
But I suppose that doesn’t make for a very good article, so let’s go through the details.

Any time I’ve ever looked at the stats of a game, and I can see the QB has over 300 yrds, 3 or more TDs, and no INTs, and his team loses, I comfortably say that he did his job and the blame for the loss should be pointed elsewhere.
That’s what we’re looking at with Love’s performance on Saturday. He finished the game with 323 yrds, 4 TDs, and zero INTs.

“But what about the second half?”

I can already hear you, so let’s go through that as well.
The offense as a whole lacked any luster mostly in the 3rd quarter. Obviously, the Bears made adjustments at halftime and the Packers didn’t. That’s on LaFleur, who is also deservedly getting criticism. The second half was also riddled with drops, more on that later.
The fourth quarter showed drastic improvement from the offense with Love getting his 4th TD pass of the game. However, a missed extra point would mark McManus’ 2nd miss of the night, with one more to come. Because another drive left us kicking a 44 yard field goal, which would also be missed.

That leaves us with the final drive of the game. Yes, I get it. This is where Love needed to shine brightest after his defense failed him throughout the 2nd half. But this is where his receivers failed him as well. Romeo Doubs made a very critical drop. He would make up for it later, but this is still killed precious time at bare minimum. Jayden Reed would also drop an easy pass on this drive. But the most critical drop of all would come from Christian Watson, who dropped an absolute dime of a throw near the 5 yard line that would likely have been a TD.

Love was not perfect in this game. I want to be clear about that. He was slapped with 2 intentional grounding calls, and a delay of game on that last drive. But he still put up one hell of a performance. If not for his receivers dropping balls like greased penguin in a bath tub, he could have finished that drive with a TD. If not for his defense completely rolling over like a man escaping the wet spot, he wouldn’t have even been in that position in the first place.

Blame LaFleur. Blame McManus. Blame the special teams in general. But Love did his best with what he had. The people around him just weren’t up to the task. Guess he really is like Rodgers and Favre after all.

COVER PHOTO CREDIT: Jeffrey Phelps/Associated Press