Matt LaFleur made the kind of call most coaches avoid when a game slips out of reach: he left Jordan Love out there for all 60 minutes of the Packers’ 35-14 loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 24 at Lambeau Field.
Love absorbed hit after hit behind an offensive line missing two starters, but he never came off the field. He finished 28 of 53 for 312 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. Green Bay, meanwhile, got almost nothing going on the ground, managing just 17 rushing yards in the home opener.
The boos started to spill down from the 76,955 fans in the building after Atlanta erased Green Bay’s early 7-0 lead with 27 straight points. By then, the mismatch was hard to miss. The Falcons controlled the game with 498 total yards and 242 rushing yards, while the Packers were stuck chasing.
LaFleur owned the decision afterward. “Just trying to get something going … just trying to play your way out of it,” he told reporters, words Rob Demovsky shared on X minutes after the game
LaFleur on keeping Jordan Love in til the end: “Just trying to get something going … just trying to play your way out of it.”
- Rob Demovsky (@RobDemovsky) September 25, 2026
He expanded on that later. “To get something going, like, try to.
You’re just trying to play your way out of it. And certainly I knew the risk there.
I never like seeing him get hit like that. And yeah, so that’s why we kept rolling,” LaFleur said in comments carried by AtoZ Sports.
The numbers tell the story of a night Green Bay never really got under control. MarShawn Lloyd led the Packers with 11 yards on four carries.
Without Josh Jacobs, who was on the commissioner-exempt list, and with the offensive line shuffled, Love was forced into 53 dropbacks. LaFleur admitted that kind of workload was not the plan.
“If you would have told me we’re going to drop back 50-some-odd times, I’d say it’s probably not a good night for us,” he added in the same AtoZ Sports piece.
Green Bay did get two touchdown passes from Love - a 4-yard strike to Christian Watson in the first quarter and a 15-yard score to Matthew Golden in the fourth - but both came far too late to change anything. The Packers also stalled on fourth-and-1 in the red zone in the third quarter and had a field goal blocked earlier.
Atlanta’s offense did whatever it wanted once Michael Penix Jr. settled in. Back from a torn ACL, Penix completed 18 of 25 passes for 256 yards and a touchdown.
Drake London was a problem all night, catching nine passes for 194 yards, and Bijan Robinson ripped through Green Bay for 194 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 29 carries. The Falcons’ official recap and box score on packers.com listed them with 37:05 of possession and a 6-of-10 mark on third down.
By the end, the scoreboard looked every bit as lopsided as the flow of the game. Atlanta improved to 1-2, while Green Bay fell to 1-2 and lost a home opener for the first time since 2012.
LaFleur called the loss a “butt-whooping” in comments first published by NBC Sports, and he didn’t try to put everything on the line in front of Love. He said blame was shared. That part felt obvious from the way the night unfolded: the offense couldn’t run, the defense couldn’t get Atlanta off the field, and Love kept standing in there while the hits kept coming.
Green Bay now has a short week to sort out the run-pass balance before Love is back under center Sunday, Oct. 4. The bigger question is whether the Packers can make the pieces around him look any sturdier before the next one turns into another long night.
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