It's one of the NFL's dead periods right now so thought I'd revive an old thread. The Love pick looms large these days, so I've been watching what's out there on him. Not All-22 stuff but there are some full games from both 2018 and 2019 available.
The number one thing that stands out to me is how much I hated that offense. They reminded me of the late MM years, running 4 wide receivers but no one could get open, with the occasional WR/TE sideline screen that fooled no one. So hard to watch. In consequence, Love was throwing a lot of back shoulder stuff or trying to float passes over the top of DBs or LBs plastering the receivers. There were also a fair number of drops.
Another thing that stood out - all of Love's evaluations talk about arm strength but I don't know, that wasn't really noticeable. Maybe he has the cannon arm from all the write ups but I thought he did a lot more touch passing than driving the ball. A lot of his picks were from under throws on 50/50 "YOLO" balls, like Jameis Winston. To be fair, there were also a number of botched catches by his WR where the ball popped up and was picked.
His technique was all over the place. He often seemed to hop on his throws, or skip. Sometimes he had a compact delivery, sometimes it looked like a big windmill motion. He seemed to do a fair amount of staring-down receivers. There was no way in hell anyone could trot him out in the NFL Year 1 and expect anything other than disaster, and having him inactive behind Boyle was prudent.
He had the occasional special "Rodgers" play, scrambling outside the pocket, throwing a sideline bullet to his left or right. His deep throws, when they connected, reminded me of Russ Wilson, dropping a lofted ball right in the bucket. And they had to be dropped in the bucket because those guys were never all that open. I can see why the team liked that stuff.
Overall I think he was a damn difficult evaluation to make. With the scheme, the lack of talent, and the messiness of his game, I just don't see how you look at him and say "Trade up in the first." Doesn't make any sense to me. On the other hand, I can see why they looked at him and thought that, in ML's offense, with the play action, the run game, the multi-TE stuff he wants to run, the ability to scheme guys open (which has been borne out this year statistically), it would be easier for him to operate out ML's offense than what he was running in college. And vitally, on top of that, he did show the occasional ability to make a play out of nothing, which you sometimes need to do in the NFL and, if you can do it with any consistency, is worth its weight in gold. But again I come back to, even if they think he can run the offense and add that element, how do you trade up in the first for him. I guess it's the supply and demand value of QBs.
