On Tuesday evening, Aaron Rodgers reached out to Jordan Love ahead of his first preseason training camp as the Green Bay Packers’ starting quarterback. He gave the young signal caller some final words of wisdom and advice before preparations started. “He said, ‘Just be yourself, have fun, and enjoy it,’” Love recalled.
Love is a different quarterback than Rodgers. Still, Love learned under Rodgers for three seasons, and Rodgers was an MVP in two of them. Therefore, it is safe to say that Love has most likely adopted some of Rodgers’ game and techniques. There will be some things that Love does that resemble Rodgers, and there will be things that Love does that Rodgers never did.
The hard count is one aspect of Aaron Rodgers’ game that I expect Jordan Love to adopt. The hard count is a technique that LaFleur, Love, and the Packers must continue to utilize. Throughout his career, Rodgers used the hard count from game to game. Around 20 percent of the time or so, according to sportingnews.com, he would use the hard count, and a chunk of those times, he would be able to draw a defensive player offsides, causing a free play and allowing Rodgers to take a deep shot that the defense was not expecting.
Aaron Rodgers yelled HARD COUNT…and then got ’em with the hard count
@AaronRodgers12 @packers pic.twitter.com/Ha3T66uRYk
— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) October 6, 2020
The hard count can do more than just catch a defense off-guard. Using a hard count can also get the defense moving and expose the coverage they are playing. It works similarly to sending a receiver in motion to expose whether the defense is in man or zone coverage.
The quarterback can use the hard count to get the linebackers, corners, and safeties to move slightly. That way he can tell who is blitzing, who is dropping into coverage, and whether they are going to play low and tight or high up and soft.
If Love and the Packers can continue to use the hard-count technique that Rodgers mastered, it will help him out a lot. Defenses likely are not expecting the Packers to use it since it was Aaron Rodgers’ specialty.
But Love is not trying to be the next Aaron Rodgers. He just wants to be the best version of himself that he can be. Therefore, he’s not going to adopt everything that he learned from Rodgers.
Rodgers’ intense pocket presence and ability to buy time inside and outside of the pocket before making the throw is one aspect of his game that you will not see from Love, at least for a few years. From 2014 to 2016, many people considered Rodgers the master of extending the play. He had an unbelievable sense of pressure and opening around him, and he was able to get outside of the pocket and move all over the field.
Jordan Love has the ability to scramble around and extend the play. But since this will be his first NFL season as a full-time starter, it does not seem that he will have the amount of patience and focus to extend the play and move receivers around as Rodgers did.
Any young quarterback will run plays that their coach designed to have them get the ball out quickly. And with LaFleur’s modern scheme, many plays may require Love to get the ball quickly and Watson, Jones, or Doubs’ hands.
If a coach has a young and inexperienced quarterback extending the plays himself or sitting in the pocket, it is much easier for the quarterback to get inside of his own head, making him more mistake-prone.
Love threw a lot of deep balls at Utah State. But he had speedy receivers, like Deven Thompkins and Savon Scarver, who could get far down the field quickly. Therefore, he didn’t have to dance in the pocket or extend the plays much.
Christian Watson may be able to help Love out since he is a speedy and tall receiver who was a deep threat last season. The offensive line is the final factor that plays into how much Love will need to scramble. If they can protect and pass-block well, Love won’t need to extend a play. But if protection breaks down, he will have no choice but to go outside of the pocket or risk taking a sack.
That doesn’t mean that Love won’t scramble at all this season. If he does, though, don’t expect him to be able to elude pressure the same way Rodgers did. However, he should occasionally use the hard count to keep defenses on their toes.