Film Room Five: Why Jordan Love is the best show going

Kliff Kingsbury is cookin', running backs are wheelin' and Jordan Love is dealin'

Welcome to The Film Room Five. If you’re a new subscriber/reader to the Read Optional, the Film Room Five is where I unload my notebook after a week of watching tape: I pick out five things that jumped out to me that I think are worth knowing or keeping tabs on.

Let’s slip off our shoes and hop around the league. This week: Washington’s run game, Brian Branch, Sean McVay’s wonky pass protection, a passing game trade and the most exhilarating quarterback in the league.

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Jordan Love: loveable maniac

Jordan Love is the best show going. Forget The Penguin (great), Disclaimer (so bad you have to keep watching to make sure it’s real), or that Aaron Hernandez show (so bad it makes you question whether all the energy used to keep streaming platforms humming is really worth slowly burning the planet), if you’re looking for something to do this weekend, grab a bag of popcorn and treat yourself to Love’s dropbacks this season. 

Since returning from his injury, Love has been unhinged. Not in a Napoleon-tries-to-take-Russia sort of way, but enough to make you wonder if he’s the most fun player you’ve ever watched.

Love has not met a coverage, concept, or throw he doesn’t believe he can — and should — hit. His passing chart against the Texans looks like the scribblings of a forgotten genius.

The catalog runs deep. This, from his return game against the Vikings, is certifiably Favre-ian.

Oof. I need an ice bath.

Love is becoming the poster child for Arm Arrogance™. No one – not even the current version of Josh Allen – is playing with such belief in their arm talent. No matter if he’s facing tight coverage, a deep defensive shell, tricky rotation or whacky blitz, Love believes – feels it to his bones – that he can uncork any shot. This, right here, is utter lunacy:

Love has no right to even think about that throw, let alone complete it. He out-threw the coverage, releasing the ball from his own 35-yard line and hitting Jayden Reed in stride on the opposing five-yard line. Did LA’s corner, Ahkello Witherspoon (#4), lose track of the ball in flight? Sure. Should that have been an easy close-out with the corner sitting in a deep-half zone? Yep. But… come on, people. What corner sinking back into a deep-half in a Tampa-2 shell, believes that the opposing quarterback will even dream of taking a shot there? Love is staring at a middle-read route, one with three defenders encroaching, including a linebacker picking up the route midstream. It’s impressive that Witherspoon’s brain didn’t fall out.

The plan of attack from defenses this season has been to light Love up, sending all manner of blitz and pressure looks after the quarterback. But ever since an early career cooking at the hands of Steve Spagnuolo, Love has become a talented identifier of the blitz. Still: there has been a slight alteration in his approach this year. Love has gone a little gaga; he’s no longer trying to solve the riddle, but looking to punish DCs for daring to serve him some spice.

Quarterbacks who hit that level typically start to clear a place on their shelves for an MVP award. For Love, it’s been up and down. His numbers against the blitz are steady — the turnovers as much a result of dropped balls, tipped passes and great defensive plays (there other guys get paid, too!) as Love himself. 

But it’s notable how people are shifting their approach to play on Love’s Arm Arrogance, hoping to bait the quarterback into indulging in bad habits. 

Love wants to torch pressures. There is a reason his average depth of target jumps up against blitz looks: if they’re sending extra guys to rush, there is space for Love to attack. Regardless of the style of pressure, Love believes he can beat any coverage or with the flick of a wrist. He is fine standing in to take a hit if it means delivering a shot downfield. If needed, he can move off his spot to conjure a better opportunity down the field. And there are throws where it’s damn near impossible to argue with his logic:

That’s a blown protection with a free runner racing into Love’s lap — a runner he had not accounted for based on how he set the protection pre-snap. Love’s response: get some depth, retreat from the blitz, lob the ball to the pylon and let his receiver run underneath it. Sheesh.

Not all blitzes or pressures are created equally, which is why looking a pure ‘blitz’ or ‘not blitz’ data is wonky. But the thing with Love is that he hasn’t met a blitz, pressure, creeper or simulated pressure look that he doesn’t want to shred down the field. 

That’s what made his back-and-forth with Houston’s defensive maestro DeMeco Ryans so interesting. Against Green Bay, Ryans blitzed Love more than he traditionally shells quarterbacks. Like many of the wonkiest blitzologists, Ryans sent heat on first down, hoping to clinch an early negative play that would keep Green Bay’s run game behind the sticks or bury Love early in a drive. Of Houston’s 14 pressures, half came on first downs.

In part, that’s because the interior of Houston’s defensive line has not brought much juice to this year's party; the pass-rush is reliant on Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter collapsing the pocket from the outside. But it also allowed the Texans to tempt Love into chucking the game away.

Ryans focused on internal pressures that aimed to penetrate an A-Gap (either side of the center), with that pressure typically arriving from depth. Ryans would either reduce his front, clogging the three interior gaps with linemen with an extra rusher tagged on to the end of the line of scrimmage, or he would maintain a typical four-man front with a fifth rusher attacking the middle of the line of scrimmage from somewhere off the ball. 

The reasoning, likely, was to ensure the Texans had a five-man wall to defend Green Bay’s base runs and to entice Love in the passing game.

For all his growth against the blitz, Love remains vulnerable to pressure looks that also change the picture on the back end, something that pops up more often when Love is forced to turn his back to the defense on under-center play-action. When in the gun — whether running a flash fake kind of play-action or taking a drop — Love can see what’s in front of him. Even if the protection plan busts, he can scan the field to find a release valve or extend with his legs until a solution presents itself. When opponents blitz Love while he’s under center, though, he can slip into old habits. His feet can get twitchy, his mechanics sloppy and his accuracy becomes scattershot as a result.

Houston played on that idea. By adding in the fifth-rusher slap-bang in the middle of the line of scrimmage, Ryans could achieve a few things:

• Change the picture on Love pre- to post-snap

• Force the Packers' interior to squeeze the protection, leaving their tackles one-on-one with Hunter and Anderson

• Build a quick wall against Green Bay’s run game if they handed the ball off

• Wash out an easy escape valve for the quarterback

That last part is crucial. The other four probably made up a larger chunk of the thinking, but the last one could have more resonance moving forward.

By bringing pressure from depth against turn-the-back shots, the Texans were able to tie up Green Bay’s running back in pass protection — who has to check for an extra rusher before releasing into his route. Even if the pressure did not get home, the Texans ‘backers did enough to limit the back from escaping the backfield to offer Love a comfort blanket.

If Green Bay’s tackles could not hold up, Anderson and Hunter would come rallying home. 

Even if the tackles held up early in the rep, Love was not afforded an easy out.

Another quarterback may have scanned the picture, realized a throw was not there to be made, eaten the ball, and lived to play another down. But this is Jordan Love! He isn’t standing for such nonsense. 

And why would he? Here is the *opening play from scrimmage*. The Texans send a five-man pressure to open things up – pinching their defensive line to attack the interior gaps and bringing pressure from the edge. The coverage rolls. Because of how the pressure unfolds, Green Bay’s back can slip through the line to offer a get-out ball. But he’s not needed; Love navigates a muddy pocket, slips, slides, and delivers a strike down the field. The ball location is perfect. The anticipation is A-plus.  

It all looks like easy work. But Ryans did not alter his gameplan. Because the point was not to halt Love hitting chunks down the field — he’s too good to contain for a full game. The plan was to drop enough rakes on the floor that the quarterback may eventually step on one. If Love is going to keep trying to shred the blitz down the field as pressure comes crashing home, eventually, he may toss one your way — and he did. 

Isn’t it fun when a well-laid plan comes together? 

Above, the Texans get everything they want. The linebacker firing downhill forces the back to stay in to keep the protection sound. There is blanket coverage on the outside. Hunter screams around the arc, forcing Love to move off his spot.

At that moment, Love has a decision to make. Does he try to take off with his legs? Does he skunk the ball? Does he try to squeeze the ball in along the sidelines, short of a first down? Does he try to cram in a shot downfield before taking a hit? It’s first down. Living to play another down is a good option.

Please. This is JORDAN LOVE. He’s going to let it fly. 

Love tries to shuffle away from the pressure before delivering a 25-yard strike downfield. He falls off his throwing platform, which causes the ball to sail. He misses his intended target (the backside in-breaker) and the ball drifts into the hands of Houston’s MOF safety. 

Chalk one up to DeMeco. 

And yet, as you can see: the thing had a chance. If Love had climbed through the pocket rather than drifting sidewards, he could have established a clean base and possibly hit the in-breaker. A play was still there to be made. But Love has such faith in his arm that he felt he could skip a step and still drive the ball to the middle of the field despite his faltering mechanics.

In a one-score contest, it could have made the difference. 

Now that Love is in his Favre era, teams will continue to find ways to try to bait him into bad decisions. Disguised coverages. Trap coverages. Uunusual rotations. But what Houston hit on was a cheap way to tempt Love into putting the ball in harm’s way. They washed out his checkdown, leaving him with a simple decision: do you want to drive the ball down the field or not? Love being Love, he was always going to bet on himself. It was not genius, against-the-grain coaching from Ryans, but it showed a good understanding of an opponent and their vulnerabilities. 

Love is a supernova talent. He has some of the best footwork in the league. He’s crisp. He plays with bounce. He plays in rhythm. He’s added subtle acts of puppetry to manipulate defenders. The growth is real. But he can still be panicky when the heat arrives after he’s turned his back to the defense.

It’s hard not to fall for a quarterback who understands that every throw, no matter the situation, is available to him and a handful of others. You fall deeper still when they prove they can actually hit them, no matter their body position or arm angle. As the tougher parts of the game have become easier for Love, he’s placed even more trust in his arm, banking on the idea that he can overcome sloppy mechanics and continue to hit deep shots. That faith is well-founded, but arm arrogance is one of those traits that opposing coaches will find ways to tilt to their advantage. It will be interesting to watch which other coaches chart a similar course, and how Love continues to evolve. 

Kliff Kingsbury is in his bag

Washington’s OC is running the most distinctive — and effective — offense in the league this season. He’s manufactured all kinds of funky designs, from the go-go formation to quirky RPOs. Time will tell whether or not this is sustainable.

With Kingsbury, the problem has never been one-off designs. He’s as creative as anyone going, happy to pinch from Nevada high schools as he is to cherrypick the best from Andy Reid’s Chiefs. This season, though, the foundation feels solid. The bedrock of the offense has been a power-based run game and the brilliance of Jayden Daniels. Whether Kingsbury can keep up his schematic hot streak or not, those things should hold.

But what’s noteworthy with Kingsbury is how much he has leaned into the heavier stuff this year. On his way out of Arizona, he had inched closer to using heavier personnel groupings on a more consistent basis, even with some slim menu of run game designs.

In Washington, though, Kingsbury is running an out-and-out power-spread, a style this here newsletter has lobbied as the best way to puncture the meta trends we’re seeing on defense.

The Commies are majoring in gap-scheme runs), using RPOs and quarterback-options as constraints to help out the box count, force opposing defenders to pat their feet or sit stationary. Kingsbury has crafted a playbook full of ways to push defensive fronts off the ball, relying on his offensive line to seal, skip and blast open holes. Roughly 41% of the run game involves a gap-style run, with the Commanders dead last in the NFL in wide-zone/outside-zone run rate.

At USC, Kingsbury spent a year as a consultant working with the nation’s foremost counter expert: Lincoln Riley. But for as much crossover as there has been with Riley’s work, Kingsbury’s offense this year looks ripped straight out of the Harbaugh-Roman years in San Francisco, when the duo first embraced an option-based attack, clubbing all before them. Every variation of counter, trap, power, or gap-oriented run you could draw up on the back of a napkin, Kingsbury is calling it. Most have some form of RPO tag (be it of the read or box count variety), and all serve a purpose: setting the table for eventual shot plays down the field.

But the run game alone – even without the payoff shots – has been a treat. Seven weeks into the season, Washington is first in the league in rush EPA/play, sixth in rush success rate, tenth in explosive run rate and first in my totally fictitious ‘My God That’s Good Stuff’ stat. 

Kingsbury has always been a wonderful play designer. He runs cool things – and adds stylish wrinkles to well-worn ideas. The difference this season is with the details.

Scan across the league, and you will find savvy run-game architects adding small tweaks to make life easier on their offense line. They’re turning fine looks (based on the play design versus the front structure) into premium looks by augmenting the blocking mechanics. The Falcons are up to some really frisky things. But so are the Commanders.

From outside the building, it’s hard to know where the credit should sit. Every organization splits responsibilities differently. But it’s worth noting that Anthony Lynn was hired this offseason to serve as the team’s run game guru.

Lynn has been one of the best run game designers in recent NFL history. Despite failings struggling as a head coach and offensive coordinator, few have consistently crafted such effective run games, no matter the mandate on high about the style of run game he has to build.

What the Commanders have unleashed so far this season is some of Lynn’s best work. Check out the quirks in what is, effectively, a simple split-back lead draw. You have the twirling handoff, and the running back stepping across Jayden Daniels so he can attack downhill, all timed up with a double-and-climb movement from the center and right guard.

Before the Browns can even figure out it’s not a pass play or play-fake, the Commanders have two blockers climbing up to Cleveland’s linebackers untouched. 

But this design, in particular, shows the level of creativity and detail that’s going into the Commanders’ rushing attack:

Did you catch that? At heart, it’s a basic wide-zone run. Only this has a split-flow action. Meaning: the offensive line and front-side blockers are all going to kick one way, attacking the gap to their left. The tight end aligned beside the left tackle is sat in what’s known as the ‘sniffer’ position. At the snap, it’s his job to cut across the defense to slice the defensive line in half, sealing the end-man on the line of scrimmage. The running backs read is the classic: bend, bang or bounce. Both receivers, sitting inside the numbers, have solid in-out positions, based on their pre-snap alignment, to clear out the perimeter corners to help pop a big run if the back makes it beyond the first level. 

It’s rudimentary stuff. Everyone runs wide-zone. Everyone has a split-flow (or ‘Slice’) variant. It’s so much a staple across the league that it’s almost hit overkill, with the coaches who repopularized the thing turning their backs on it as a go-to look.

But for Kingsbury and Lynn, it’s not a go-to run — it’s some 15% of their run game. And they’ve continually added creative layers to the base design to keep it fresh and defenses off-kilter. The example above, though, is among their best work. Everything looks, feels and smells like a traditional wide-zone with a split flow action from the H-back. But look at what the other tight end, Zach Ertz, the ‘Y’, is doing. He isn’t digging out the linebacker or nickel corner to the frontside, right at the point of attack, trying to drive them to the sideline. No, he’s also splitting across the formation… at the second level. This time, the tight end’s job is to clean out whichever backside defender is in the box.

Against the Panthers, it was a safety. The safety had walked down to help fit the run, protecting against the running back sticking his foot in the ground and cutting the ball back upfield. 

Defenses want to roll wide-zone ‘off the table’, making the runner press the hole until they run out of real estate laterally. A flash of color in an open spot (the safety walking down, in this example), tells the back to keep pressing and moving horizontally. The offense is trying to splice the front in two to provide a clear opening for the back.

By having the tight end detached from the formation split across the field in unison with the H-back, the Commanders can carve out the end man on the line of scrimmage at the first and second levels of the front.

Holy moly is that good. It should have given Brian Robinson Jr. a chance to thump his head on the goalposts — or at least reach the middle field safety untouched. Ertz whiffed slightly, turning the play into a solid gain rather than a potential touchdown. But the mechanics of the thing are irresistible. 

As defenses are adapting their approach to try to cover the threat of play-action, happy to slow play the run if it means remaining solid in coverage against play-action, crafty offensive minds are finding ways to leverage the threat of play-action to elevate their run-game.

Booting out of wide-zone is the league’s go-to play-action concept. What Kingsbury and Lynn flashed against the Panthers was a new twist on the league-wide staple. With Ertz releasing across the formation rather than getting involved in the initial blocking mechanics, it looked to the rolled down safety like it was going to be a boot play. Instead, Ertz’s initial release was a bluff. He gave a play-action tell to the defense, forcing the safety to hang around to check it out, before the tight end came steaming towards his ear hole.

Rather than a play-pass fake (bluffing like you’re running and wanting to throw), it’s more of a play-run fake, teasing the play-action shot so that the offense can spring a big run on the ground. As play designing goes, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Kingsbury and Lynn are cooking.