Jordan Love can make magic, but Super Bowl proves that can't be Packers' only path to victory

Forget all the stars in the Super Bowl on Sunday. All the names and narratives, eliminate them from your brain. Who are the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers? They’re two teams who win because they play great defense and their quarterbacks make a handful of plays every game in a well-designed offense. Sure, the 49ers have the most loaded skill group in the league and the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, but at their core, they’re alike in that essential way.

As the Green Bay Packers build around Jordan Love, they can’t miss the lesson.

The 49ers have better offensive pieces than the Packers, but Green Bay has the more talented quarterback. The Chiefs have the better quarterback, but Green Bay has far better skill talent even with future Hall of Famer Travis Kelce able to dominate games the way he did in the AFC Championship Game.

For too much of the Aaron Rodgers era, the Packers let the offensive skill talent falter in favor of building up a defense. That would have been fine had it worked. Rodgers proved capable of elevating inferior pass catchers. He almost won a divisional-round game with Jeff Janis and Jared Abbrederis. Not building up the skill group wasn’t the sin fans and media laid at the feet of Green Bay general manager Ted Thompson. The real issue was that Thompson missed too many times on defensive building blocks.

This version of the Chiefs doesn’t strike fear into defenses the way they did with Tyreek Hill or, in his prime, Kelce, but they were still a top-10 offense by DVOA and expected points added per play. Green Bay’s offense for the entire second half of the season and the playoffs, however, was better. But in too many games, the defense wasn’t up to the same standard, as evidenced by a five-minute, game-losing series in San Francisco.

If not for that drive, we wouldn’t be talking about any lessons to learn from other Super Bowl teams, but the Packers may well be getting set to play this weekend.