FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Matt LaFleur didn’t hear the MVP chants shouted Jordan Love-style from the Packers faithful who made their presence felt Sunday at Gillette Stadium.
“I didn’t do it,” LaFleur said after Green Bay’s 45-27 blowout victory. “I can’t hear anything over there. I’m just trying to figure out what to call next.”
He can be forgiven, as Love gave him every reason to keep his head on the call list and continue to dial up the big plays.
Love heard them and he appreciated them, although, in his typical low-key style, he was more interested in talking about his teammates afterward than himself.
“It’s great,” he said. “It’s a really cool feeling to hear the fans chanting that. But that’s all I can say.”
If Love wants to follow in the footsteps of his Green Bay quarterback predecessors — who combined for seven MVPs — and win a league MVP award himself, this game will be remembered as the game that launched his candidacy in earnest.
In just 29 pass attempts, he threw for 372 yards and three touchdowns, missing the maximum passer rating of 158.3 but only 5.1 rating points. If a seam ball to Tucker Kraft hadn’t been thrown about six inches too far, he would have posted four touchdowns and probably maxed out his rating.
He made one of the league’s top 10 defenses look pedestrian, and that’s good.
Never mind that Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez is one of the highest-paid players at his position. Love pursued him shamelessly.
“It’s just the guys we have on the outside going out there and making plays,” Love said, giving credit to Christian Watson and Matthew Golden, who combined for all but 37 of Love’s passing yards.
“It doesn’t matter who it is (on defense). We trust the game plan and we hope guys are going to get open and play. This is the NFL. We see great DBs every week. Our mindset is we have to keep attacking.”
It doesn’t matter that New England chases him with blitzes. He knew where he wanted to go with the ball and he made the Patriots pay.
“We know what it is,” Love said. “We’ve seen pressure all season. It comes down to guys winning one-on-one on the outside and the O-line giving me time. They did a great job tonight.”
Never mind that the offense didn’t find a running game until the second half.
The Packers haven’t really had a reliable one all season and have regularly shuffled offensive linemen, two factors that make Love’s league-leading passing yardage total all the more impressive. Because it does all of this in a practically one-dimensional way.
This is what will start the MVP debate.
Love’s throws with pressure, either closing in or in front of his face, were his most impressive in this match, as they floated there and fell right on target. Sometimes it was a video game.
“He’s out there, he’s taking hits and he’s still distributing the ball,” LaFleur said.
“You keep calling him. I can’t say enough. They’re low-percentage throws in theory, but he makes them look like they’re high-percentage. They’re right.”
What’s really scary is that the Packers scored 45 points and blew two short-yardage situations at midfield in the first half that could have put the Patriots away earlier.
But the last thing Love will do is get too high and mighty after just one performance. He knows better.
Yes, he hopes for himself and this team, that this match is the springboard to bigger and better things to come. That’s the goal. But he’s not about to assume that or take it for granted one way or another.
Especially not with the Vikings and Brian Flores’ crazy blitz defense coming to Lambeau Field next week.
Love will give Flores plenty to think about when he watches film of that Patriots game, but Love also remembers how Green Bay’s offense was clicking at Minnesota in Week 1 before being overwhelmed by Flores’ pressure in the fourth quarter.
“You want to go for it, we always talk about it. You want to stack up the wins,” Love said. “But we have Minnesota coming to our house next week, someone we lost to earlier in the season.
“The mindset has to be complete focus and preparation on Minnesota. You can’t let one game put you to sleep.”
He won’t, but he might have awakened some MVP voters to another Packers QB to keep on their radar.
Gn sports
