Packers have solid, if imperfect, infrastructure for Jordan Love to succeed

Today's edition of The Leap is brought to you by Underdog Fantasy, an industry leader in daily and season-long fantasy contests.

Subscribers of The Leap can join Underdog Fantasy here with our special signup link to double your initial deposit up to $100. It's a great way to play fantasy sports with real fans while also supporting the work we do here.

---

The 2023 Green Bay Packers don’t have a roster to rival the Greatest Show on Turf or even some of the recent vintage offensive groups of the Aaron Rodgers era. But we’ve seen teams do more with less. In fact, we need only look across Lake Michigan for an example of a team built around a terrific offensive line, a varied run game, and play-action shots plays with a talented but somewhat limited quarterback. This is precisely the advantage the wide zone, Kyle Shanahan-tree scheme provides.

In a perfect world, the Packers would give Jordan Love the same sort of elite skill talent Rodgers benefitted from back in 2008 when he walked into a receiver room with Donald Driver, Greg Jennings, James Jones, a rookie Jermichael Finley, and proto-Jordy Nelson. Still, when looking around the team, other squads have put together above-average, even good offenses built around similar levels of talent.

Ted Thompson believed in what the NFL calls “World Theory,” the idea that there are only so many humans in the world of a certain size with elite movement skills. While the game has opened up considerably since the early 2000s, the ability to win in the trenches remains an essential trait for any good offense (unless the team has Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, et al).

As a starting point, the Packers give Love one of the best groups of large humans in football, both to protect him in the passing game and to move other large humans in the run game.

In the Matt LaFleur era, the Packers are fifth, eighth, fifth, and fourth in rush offense DVOA. Though it’s impossible to say how much of that success is impacted by the brain and threat of Rodgers himself, the LaFleur tree system consistently produces quality run games from Los Angeles, to San Francisco, Miami, and Cleveland among others.