GREEN BAY, Wis. -- When Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love said after last week’s 35-14 loss to the Atlanta Falcons that he needs to make quicker decisions, the next question should have been: How much quicker can he possibly make them given the light speed with which opposing pass rushers have been in his face?
According to Next Gen Stats, the Packers have allowed the most “quick pressures” -- defined as pressure on the quarterback in less than 2.5 seconds -- in the NFL, and it’s not close. Love has been quick pressured 37 times in three games. No other team has allowed more than 28.
In last Thursday’s loss, the Falcons recorded 15 quick pressures, second most in a game this season. The most was the 17 the Packers allowed to the Vikings in Week 1.
“Obviously you always need time,” Love said Wednesday. “The more time you have, the better you’re able to pick apart the defense and find those completions. That’s with anything, you always want time. Obviously there’s times you might not have time, you’ve got to find those answers.
“That’s an area that we’ve got to improve on, in pass [protection], making sure we’re going to the right people and sustaining blocks for as long as we can, give me some time to pick the defense apart and obviously something that we need to improve on.”
At some point, the concern is the impact it will have on Love -- both from a fundamental standpoint and when it comes to his health -- if it hasn’t already. The concern is that a quarterback who has been hit so many times can start to feel pressure even when it’s not there, or as coaches and scouts call it, “seeing ghosts.”
“There’s definitely some plays, especially later in the [Falcons] game, where we talked about my feet are just getting a little bit off and that definitely is some of the pressure being a factor in that,” Love said. “In that scenario, I’ve just got to be better right there.
“I can improve my game to make sure I’m staying on schedule, trusting my feet, reading with my feet, and it’s going to help me be as accurate as possible. But I think it’s a natural reaction sometimes as a quarterback, you might feel sped up. I’ve got to fight that urge and trust my feet and still be great in the pocket.”
While Love has thrown for the fourth-most yards (844) through three games and has six touchdown passes against two interceptions, the problem is that he has a 1.7 QBR when pressured. That’s the second lowest in the NFL ahead of Denver’s Bo Nix (1.1). Love has a 31% completion rate, no touchdowns and both of his interceptions when pressured.
Teams might even try to send more rushers after Love. He ranks only 10th in pressure percentage this season, according to ESPN tracking, taking pressure on 38% of his dropbacks. However, that could be in part because he’s averaging 2.49 seconds per pass, the quickest in the league according to Next Gen Stats. He averaged 2.84 seconds in his first three seasons as a starter.
“I would say there’s certain situations, yes,” LaFleur said when asked if Love could get the ball out quicker. “But then there’s a lot of times where the rush has been hitting home quick.
“You’ve got to look at what you’re asking your guys to do and what we’re doing schematically, and we’ve got to do a better job of mixing it up, I would say, so it’s not just all these longer developing plays.”
The Packers have a team pass block win rate of 16%, the worst by far since ESPN first began tracking it in 2017. That said, pass rushers have been winning at a higher clip this season, which has caused the league wide pass block win rate to drop to 49% this season from the league average of 59% over the past 10 seasons.
The individual results look just as bad, if not worse.
Of the 66 qualified tackles, left tackle Jordan Morgan ranks 65th and right tackle Anthony Belton is 66th. Belton took over early in Week 2, when Zach Bako-Bewele sustained a season-ending knee injury.
Of the 67 guards that are ranked, Donovan Jennings sits at 63rd, Jacob Monk 66th and Jager Burton 67th.
At center, Sean Rhyan ranks 32nd out of 33.
Enough about the numbers. If Love thinks he needs to process things quicker, then it’s up to the coaches to help him figure out how.
“We’ve had a lot of hard conversations, some really productive conversations, I’ll just leave it at that,” offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich said this week. “But we just need to run our offense.”
It’s not just about pass protection, either considering the run game might be a bigger problem. How much of that is because they’re without running back Josh Jacobs, who remains on the commissioner exempt list, is debatable. But through three games, the Packers have rushed for a league-low 146 yard -- the fewest by a Packers team through three games since at least 1933. Of course, it’s hard to run for much more when they had only nine rushes against the Falcons.
And then there’s the personnel department’s responsibility in this.
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst was so confident about his offensive line, a group whose only major addition this offseason was Burton, a fifth-round pick, that he kept 10 on the roster because he was “really worried about people poaching our guys.”
Less than a month later, Gutekunst had to revamp the position. In a span of five days in the past week, he signed three former first-round picks: Kevin Zeitler and Laken Tomlinson to the 53-man roster plus Mekhi Becton to the practice squad.
They made their practice debuts Wednesday, and it’s not out of the question one or more could play Sunday when the 1-2 Packers are at the 0-3 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1 p.m. ET, Fox).
Zeitler is the most accomplished of the three, but he had no training camp and before Wednesday had not been on a field since last season’s regular-season finale with the Titans. Zeitler has played almost all of his 214 career games at right guard, where Monk has struggled and now is on the injury report with a quadriceps issue.
Tomlinson has played most of his career at left guard, where the Packers have started three different players. Preferred starter Aaron Banks remains on the injury report with knee and toe injuries.
“Obviously 1-2, it is what it is,” Zeitler said. “A million things have happened, but there’s a lot of talent on this team, lot of great guys and things can flip just like that.”
