Jordan Love Week 4 QB Grade: Packers @ Cowboys

I'm not going to lie, I did not expect the Packers defense to struggle as much as it did. While it was an exciting Sunday night game, it ultimately led to a 40-40 tie. Statistically Love looked great, throwing for over 300 yards and 3 touchdowns on the night. But there' some questions that linger from it. Where has the deep ball gone, or at least, the intermediate? Is this a biproduct of the issues on the offensive line? Let's take a look at the breakdown.

Basics (Season Average in Italics)

C/A: 17.7/26 (68.1%) | 31/43 (72.1%)

Yards: 221 | 337

aDOT: 9.2 | 5.9

Touchdowns: 1.7 | 3

Turnovers: 0.3 | 1

QB at Fault Sacks: 1 | 0

Passer Rating: 110.2 | 118.1

True Passer Rating: 144.4 | 123.5

Time to Throw: 2.62s | 2.57s

Time to Pressure: 2.53s | 2.66s

Pressure Rate: 32.97% | 34.00%

On-Target Rate: 64.3% | 66.6%

PPR / BPR: 9.7%PPR / 7.8%BPR | 3.9%PPR / 5.9%BPR

Breakdown

• Man, where has the downfield play gone these last two weeks? I 100% understand week 3 and the Browns DL putting Love through hell, but after leading the world in aDOT the first 2 weeks of the season, this marks back to back weeks under league average aDOT (~6.7). Love has a 5.7 aDOT against a Dallas defense that gave up 9.2 to the Bears a week prior.

• 32 of Love's 43 attempts were under 10 yards with 18 of them coming behind the line of scrimmage! Over the last 2 weeks 82.4% of his passes fall in that range.

• He was pretty bad on the deep ball this week as well, hitting on just 1 of 6 attempts, the 1 hit being the 46 yard completion to Matthew Golden, an encouraging sign for the rookie who has had a bit of a slow start to the season. On the season Love is just 5/ for 17 throwing deep, a 29.4% completion rate.

• Though I suppose I'm focusing a bit too much on the negative, because thus far Love's TOW rate has plummeted, his completion % is way up, and he sports one of the best passer ratings in the league.

• Anyways, back to the game, I loved his deep completion to Matthew Golden, fantastic arm strength on the roll out and put plenty of air on it to let Golden get underneath it. The Packers actually had two guys in the area who could have hauled this one in.

• His 1 turnover worthy play came on the strip sack, I did not grade his interception on the penalty as such. I did grade that as a bad through, however.

• On his first touchdown to Romeo Doubs (dude hauled in 3 this week!) he showcased his ability to accurately place the ball when needed, giving Doubs a pretty each touchdown thanks to it.

• His 2nd touchdown to Doubs though was my favorite. a Great throw with the pressure baring down on him, Love fires a ball off his back foot over a mid level defender for essentially a walk in touchdown.

• I had trouble grading the controversial deep throw to Wicks, many of which were calling for pass interference. I'm in the personal believe that under thrown balls shouldn't be rewarded (even as a dude who played WR!) but the fact that it was underthrown gave Wicks a better shot to catch it. I graded it as good, without a drop seeing as that would have been an extraordinary catch.

• He also had a clutch completion in OT to Matthew Golden on 4th down to keep the game alive, a nice 14 yard ball with a good drive to it.

• How lucky were the Packers to not Eberflus the game away there on that last play? 1 second left on the clock when you had, what, 16-17 seconds left after the last play? Any type of tip into the air might have lost the Packers the game there.

• Overall Love played winning football, turning in a -0.50/2.00/1.50 score. This charts as an higher level "Average" game, meaning 3 of his first 4 starts have been average or better. The only blip being last week. Packers head into the early bye next week, and host the Bengals at Lambeau after.