Love vs The League, Who Actually played better, Jordan Love or Michael Penix Jr.?

Love vs. The League, Week Three Edition

When I watched this game in real time, I saw an absolutely putrid offensive line. When I rewatched the film, I saw it again. Make no mistake about it, this O-line is as bad as advertised. They are quite simply playing bad football. There’s no masking it or sugarcoating it.

After watching the tape, though, I do feel there’s more room for optimism than Packers nation would lead you to believe. The team didn’t play horribly in the first half. Defensively, they looked good in stretches, and offensively, they had some explosives.

There was a crucial moment in the game where the Packers made a third-down stop up 7-0 and were poised to get great field position right after they had easily marched down the field and scored a TD. They got called for a very questionable roughing the passer, and a game that looked destined to become a two-score lead ended up becoming a tie game in a hurry after an explosive Bijan run and a quick TD following the penalty.

After that play, the team seemed to lose their oomph. They had just played an OT game on the East Coast four days earlier, and it felt like whatever energy they were manufacturing left the building after the Falcons tied the game. Penix was off to a terrible start, and if they had gone down two scores, maybe they wouldn’t have felt as comfortable allowing him to hand off and screen pass us to death for the rest of the evening.

This team yet again showed a lack of ability to handle even the tiniest amount of adversity. One questionable call shouldn’t sap all the energy out of a team. They played with no heart on this evening and let the game flip on them. That is inexcusable and shows poor leadership.

All of that out of the way, upon watching the film, it really seems like this team has plenty of talent. The O-line was bad, but it wasn’t as crippling as many Packers fans believe. We had chances and repeatedly shot ourselves in the foot, whether that manifested as dropped passes, missed throws, missed tackles, missed fourth-down conversions deep in enemy territory or, yes, missed blocks.

This game could have been much, much closer. What I saw was a tired team that happened to be undisciplined and a little unlucky. I’m not sure I saw a team that will be a bottom feeder all season. Maybe that is wishful thinking.

With all that out of the way, on to the QB matchup.

Jordan Love

Jordan Love ended the game 28/53 for 312 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT and a 75.4 passer rating. This was perhaps Love's worst game of the season so far, but he still wasn't terrible.

I only graded 34 dropbacks for Love. I stopped when the Packers were down 27-7 with 10:50 left in the fourth quarter. That's not an insurmountable lead, but on the next drive Love started racking up big numbers on my scale against a soft zone. It quite simply didn't feel fair to Penix. Atlanta was giving him whatever he wanted in the middle of the field and wasn't blitzing at nearly the same frequency as earlier.

It seemed pretty likely that Jordan Love was about to do his best Kirk Cousins impression and garbage-time his way to a win in the QB matchup. He did later throw a pick, so maybe that would have dragged him back below Penix anyway, but at that point it felt like grading those snaps served no purpose. Jordan hadn't played a good game, and a meaningless late score wasn't going to change that.

Now, on to what I actually saw from Love and this offense.

Love has a great feel for MLF's system. He knows how to run it, he knows what coverages to throw into and he knows when it's smart not to force the ball into a tight window. He really does look comfortable in the offense, and he seems to make the correct read significantly more often than his counterparts pretty consistently.

That being said, there are some patterns starting to emerge where he's deficient.

Love hunts the deep ball far too often, and paired with our offensive line woes, that's been a pretty lethal combination for negative plays. There were way too many times in this game where he had an open checkdown, but kept his eyes downfield hoping Golden or Watson would get open enough for him to hurl it deep. Too often that resulted in a sack, a throwaway or him finally checking it down much too late as the YAC opportunity was already gone.

This has come up time and time again through the first few weeks of the season, and it's becoming a genuinely troubling trend.

The other troubling trend in our passing game is MLF.

His playcalling has been suspect at best. I noted it the last two weeks in this column, and it remained true here. Gone are the days of two or three guys getting wide ass open all over the field while Love takes his time and picks defenses apart. The WRs are as good as ever, but for whatever reason MLF seems obsessed with sending both Watson and Golden 20+ yards downfield seemingly every play.

Pair that with a bad offensive line and Kraft chipping on nearly every snap, and we end up playing a very feast or famine style of football. We already famously don't have a running game at all. Our screen game is pretty inept. We really can't afford to also have no short or intermediate passing game.

Living and dying by the deep ball has resulted in way too many three and outs, and to me, that's the biggest issue from the first three weeks that actually feels fixable.

To MLF's credit, you wouldn't know it by the scoreboard, but I thought he called a much better second half offensively. We ran far more short and intermediate routes with Watson, Golden and Kraft, and when everyone did go deep, Love usually had a checkdown available.

Unfortunately for MLF, the adjustment went mostly unnoticed because guys dropped the ball on several of his best play calls. We also stalled out a drive at the 7-yard line and had a bunch of fluky mistakes pile up.

The Packers played horribly in this game, but after watching the film, I believe it was a closer game than the scoreboard made it look. Nonetheless playing the Atlanta Falcons somewhat close at home just can't be the goal.

Michael Penix Jr.

Penix ended the game 18 for 25 for 256 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT and a passer rating of 101.4. Quite a bit of the yardage came from YAC on screen passes. Quite simply, the Packers defense looked gassed from the OT game just a few days earlier. The tackling was awful, and they overpursued on a number of screens. They looked good out of the gates and started fast, but after the roughing the passer penalty early in the game, they just seemed to disappear.

Penix started the game badly. Of his first five throws, three of them were negative, including the worst throw of the game by either QB, a really bad INT on 2nd-and-10 at midfield. This felt quite a bit like the Carson Wentz game in Week 1, where it looked like Penix was on the brink of having a really terrible game until the defense shot themselves in the foot several times and helped him build some confidence. Eventually, he heated up and started slinging it.

They didn't ask Penix to do a whole lot, but he executed what they did ask him to do very well. There was a point in the second half where Penix rattled off nine positive plays in just 10 dropbacks.

His 68-yard throw to Drake London down the sideline was very, very good and earned the highest passing grade of the day for either QB. I'm not sure Penix is the answer at QB long term for the Falcons, but if their run game and screen pass game continue to cook, he is definitely good enough to go over the top of the defense once in a while and make smart decisions. I liked how he played overall, and maybe this is the year he starts really putting it together.

So Who Actually Played Better?

This one goes to Penix.

Love finished with a +3 across 34 graded plays for +0.09 per play, while Penix finished at +6 across 25 plays for +0.24 per play. Love had more positive plays, but twice as many negative plays.

Penix played a nice game within the Falcons system. They didn't ask him to do much, but he was up for the task whenever they needed him to step up. Love did a pretty good job of keeping the ball out of harm's way, but a poor job of checking it down. Love and MLF are hunting the deep ball too aggressively right now, and it's straight up hurting the team.

Neither QB knocked it out of the park this week, but Penix emerged as the clear winner on Thursday night.

Winner: Michael Penix Jr.
Love vs. The League Record: 1-2