Jordan Love spent three years studying under Aaron Rodgers, a potential Hall of Fame quarterback, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t ready to listen to the wisdom of another, particularly since the Green Bay Packers’ new starting quarterback has had an up-and-down training camp.
Peyton Manning spoke to the whole squad at Monday’s training camp practise in Green Bay, but he also spent time with Love personally.
Love, who served as Rodgers’ backup for three years before to this season, said one of Manning’s most important lessons was how coachable a quarterback must be.
“How are you asking to be coached?” Manning questioned him, according to Love. “Are you the kind of man who wants to be trained hard? Are you the kind of person that simply wants to go do your own thing? It all counts. [Manning] said that when he was a player, the most important thing for him was to be well-coached. He was continuously asking to be informed what he was doing wrong and other such things.”
Manning had some questions for Love as well.
“He was asking me if everyone was on the same page in terms of me with the plays, with the guys, if everybody’s got good communication,” Love said. “I was basically saying to him, ‘Yeah, we have really good communication around here.’”
“I was asking him how that was for him, and he talked about it to the team in the team meeting room, as well, just hitting that’s one of the biggest things that he felt was what made the Colts so good when he played for them was how well they communicated with each other and how well they bonded as a team — all that kind of off-the-field stuff.”
Manning encountered Love on one of his better days. With Manning there, Love delivered maybe his greatest deep ball of camp, a 67-yard touchdown pass to Christian Watson. However, Love and the offence struggled the next day. During the two-minute exercise, the No. 1 offence was unable to move the ball at all.
“It’s frustrating that we haven’t even been able to get a drive started, let alone move the ball downfield to score,” Love said. “It’s something we’re going to go back to film, figure out, watch it, see what areas we need to improve on, and come back to next week.”
Despite the fact that Manning was unaware of Tuesday’s difficulties, Love said another piece of advice from Manning was appropriate.
“The most important thing is to keep going and never let your head drop,” Love remarked. “It’s not going to be flawless. There will be setbacks. It’s not going to be a great season every year, and it’s about developing the capacity to bounce back when things don’t go as planned. Peyton brought it up. Handling hardship is his strongest suit. He said he went — I’m not sure what it was — like 3-13 his rookie year and spoke about having the rookie interception record that he now has, and then obviously they rebounded back and went like 13-3 their second year.”
Packers coach Matt LaFleur wouldn’t reveal why Manning was at practise, but Love claimed it wasn’t to urge him to film Season 2 of Manning’s documentary “Quarterback.” However, when Manning was in town, LaFleur requested that he address the whole squad.
“He addressed our team and just kinda the lessons he learned, especially as a young player, about how to respond to adversity, the great teams he was on, his approach to the game,” LaFleur said. “I thought it was extremely beneficial there.”
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