The Packers’ Offense Didn’t Use Jordan Love Enough In 2025

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - JANUARY 10: Jordan Love #10 of the Green Bay Packers looks to pass prior to an NFL wild card playoff game against the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field on January 10, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Jordan Love was a spectacularly efficient quarterback in 2025. Just about any stat you can find paints him as a quarterback who took care of the ball and got results when the Packers put the ball in his hands.

So why didn’t the Packers do it more?

Maintained by consummate stathead Ben Baldwin, rbsdm.com is one of the foremost repositories of quarterback data. Of particular interest to our discussion here is the EPA+CPOE composite, which combines the EPA a quarterback generates with his Completion Percentage Over Expected (CPOE) to generate a clean, simple number representing quarterback efficiency.

Love did quite well in this number in 2025, ranking third behind Drake Maye and Brock Purdy. He was one of only 14 quarterbacks in the NFL to generate an EPA+CPOE composite of .100 or better. It’s safe to call Love one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league.

But among the QBs that hit the .100 threshold, Love ranked just eighth in average attempts, throwing just 29.2 passes per game, well behind league leaders Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott, and Matthew Stafford, all of whom averaged at least 35 pass attempts per game.

A six attempt difference may not seem like all that much but consider this: the Packers averaged 6.2 plays per drive in 2025. Assuming a 50/50 split between runs and passes, that means Love was almost two full drives’ worth of passes behind the league leaders last season. That seems like a mistake.

How did things end up this way? A big reason for it is the Packers’ commitment to running the ball on early downs. The Packers were comfortably in the bottom third of the league last year in early down passes, preferring to run the ball on first and second downs more than 50% of the time.

That, too, seems like a mistake, and it looks even worse when you see how productive the Packers’ ground game was relative to the passing game. The Packers had a terrifically efficient passing game, but their rushing game was in the bottom third of the league. They were sacrificing Love passes for runs that were going nowhere.

Fortunately, the fix here is easy — if Matt LaFleur is willing to change his approach. The Packers need to ditch the early down runs in 2026 and let Love loose. He has the receivers for it. Even with Romeo Doubs likely departing, the Packers still have an enviable top four in Christian Watson, Jayden Reed, Matthew Golden, and Dontayvion Wicks. And that’s not even mentioning Tucker Kraft, who should be back early next season. Heck, even Luke Musgrave was relatively useful down the stretch in 2025. 

The Packers have no excuse for operating this way in 2026. Their lead running back slowed down dramatically in 2025. Their offensive line likely won’t be any better at generating the sort of push needed to run the scheme Matt LaFleur seems determined to run. But Jordan Love will still be there, along with his bevy of pass catchers. It’s time to put the offense in his hands.