Colin Cowherd thinks the Packers have one of the league’s better quarterback-coach pairings, putting Jordan Love and Matt LaFleur inside his top 10.
That’s a strong spot for a duo that’s still carrying plenty of scrutiny in Green Bay. Love has settled in as a capable starter under LaFleur, but the Packers clearly expect more than competence after handing him a four-year, $220 million deal in 2024.
The message is simple: solid isn’t the goal. Superstar play is.
Cowherd made his case by pointing straight at LaFleur’s track record.
"The often beleaguered Matt LaFleur, Jordan Love, who get a lot of criticisms, but LaFleur has won 76 games in seven years," Cowherd said. "That's the second most of any coach in his first seven years of all time. LaFleur can coach."
The numbers around Love show why the expectations keep climbing. He finished last season with 3,381 passing yards, 23 passing touchdowns and a 66.3% completion rate. Green Bay went 9-7-1 and then fell to the Chicago Bears in the wild-card round of the 2025 NFL playoffs.
Now Love heads into the 2026 season with 11,535 passing yards and 83 passing touchdowns on his résumé, along with a 27-20-1 record as a starter. The Packers open against the Minnesota Vikings, and the pressure is obvious. Micah Parsons will miss the start of the season while recovering from his ACL tear, so Love will need to carry even more of the load early.
Green Bay is still trying to climb back to the kind of postseason standard the franchise set with Aaron Rodgers and before him Brett Favre. Since Love took over for Rodgers, the Packers are 1-3 in the playoffs, which only adds to the expectation that he has to deliver more than regular-season competence.
Love said one of his biggest focuses has been tightening up the details in the pocket.
"My biggest thing that I've noticed since I got back is just my feet in the pocket, trying to be as smooth and consistent as possible," Love said. "When I go through my reads, get into my hitches and not getting antsy, not getting to that point where you're trying to move through the pocket too fast.
Just staying calm, staying relaxed, move through my reads. If I've gotta move around in the pocket, keeping those movements pretty tight and not kind of running into where guys might be peeling off and able to hit you.
"So just really trying to focus on my feet, my pocket movements. Obviously I think all those things are tied to accuracy and just the timing of routes and things like that, so just trying to be as dialed in as possible. That's the biggest thing I've been trying to work on so far."
LaFleur’s overall record in Green Bay is hard to ignore, too. The Packers are 79-46-1 under him in regular season and playoff games combined.
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