The Green Bay Packers squandered a golden opportunity to take charge of the NFC on Sunday by allowing the Detroit Lions to come into Lambeau Field and push them around for 60 minutes. Following the loss, which dropped Green Bay to 6-3 on the year and put them behind the 8-ball in the North, coach Matt LaFleur found himself behind a podium answering questions about Jordan Love.
Which he found quite annoying.
Love, fighting back from injury, wasn’t great in the loss. He completed 23 of 39 passes for 273 yards and failed to find the end zone while throwing an interception.
“Is it a delicate balance with a young quarterback, who makes all the plays that Jordan does, to coach him in a way,” a reporter began before LaFleur jumped in.
“You guys are going to make … like, I understand,” LaFleur said. “It’s really annoying up here though. Like, you know, we’re obviously … he’s fighting. He’s competing. We know that we’ve gotta take care of the football. But I don’t question anything about what he’s trying to do. We just gotta do it better.”
Here’s the thing. He’s right! It is 100 percent annoying for coaches to go out there and answer the same types of questions over and over again. Love is a spectacular young player but he is not perfect and will make mistakes. Not all of those mistakes are because he’s young. Some are just the product of playing quarterback in the NFL, which is something even veterans struggle with (see Joe Flacco on Sunday night).
Still, part of the job—fair or not—is to do that song and dance without saying out loud that it’s an annoyance. Mostly because fans don’t want to hear that type of stuff after a loss.
