It’s Week 1, and it was about two and a half quarters in, so Matt LaFleur was at the point most coaches are, still learning about his Packers’ strengths and weaknesses, which buttons to push and which to lay off. Which led to a moment of indecision with 6:34 left in the third quarter and Green Bay up 17–6 in Chicago.
His first-year starting quarterback, Jordan Love, had just scrambled for nine yards to turn a third-and-12 into fourth-and-3 at the Bears’ 35. He could have just send the field goal team out for a 53-yarder to push the lead to 14, though that was another spot where he was breaking in a new starter after moving on from another forever Packer, kicker Mason Crosby. So he went to Love and asked him, “Do you wanna go for it?”
“Yeah,” Love responded, without missing a beat.
Just then, safety Darnell Savage, eavesdropping on the conversation, screamed at LaFleur, “We got you, Coach!”
“I was like, ,” LaFleur said over his cell a couple hours later, as the Packers’ team bus made its way to the airport for the short trip home Sunday. “We ended up calling a timeout on the play because I didn’t like our play initially. We wanted to take a peek at what I thought was coming. So we called the timeout. And I was like, .”
And on this Sunday, for the first time in his five seasons as Packers coach, LaFleur wasn’t referencing the quarterback when he said that. And it was more than just O.K. It was actually optimal.
LaFleur was talking about Aaron Jones, who on this snap was set to Love’s left. At the snap, the veteran back ran laterally to the numbers, where T.J. Edwards was waiting, then snapped inside, leaving the Bears linebacker in his dust, and giving Love, sitting in the pocket, an easy target over the middle. Love hit Jones as he was crossing the line for the first down, and Jones did the rest—racing through the defense for a 35-yard score.
The moment pushed the Packers’ lead to 24–6, but did so much more in telling the story of Love’s first game action as an entrenched NFL starter, and one replacing a legend. In so many ways, actually, it allowed Love to follow the advice he got in a text from Rodgers the night before training camp started, telling him to just be himself and not anyone else.
Remember, it was a defensive guy who gave LaFleur the verbal green light to pull the trigger, telling his coach that, if the offense failed, his unit would make up for it. It was Jones whom LaFleur trusted. It was the offensive line that gave Love the time to easily make the throw.
Love didn’t need to be Rodgers on Sunday. Because the Packers are good enough to not need that from him at this point. Which is probably what everyone missed about his taking over as the starting quarterback.
