Jordan Love’s Shaky Play Nearly Changed Green Bay’s Week 18 Calculus

It was either Bill Shakespeare or Bill Parcells who posed one of life’s great conundrums: “To rest your starters, or not to rest your starters? That is the question.”

It’s one of the great luxury-class debates in the NFL, a Cadillac problem for teams to ponder when they’re already certified as playoff-bound. If you have the No. 1 seed locked up, or if your playoff seeding is otherwise determined, or maybe if you’re just not terribly concerned about dropping a spot depending on your opponent — there’s no shortage of scenarios that might justify keeping your best guys out in the week before the playoffs start.

Ultimately, the dilemma boils down to whether it’s worth risking a major injury — or even a minor, nagging one — to some of your best players just to keep them sharp, football-ready, and comfortably in their routine. But of course there are a zillion minor factors that might tip the scales, depending on your team’s specific situation.

Is there much empirical data to argue broadly in one director or another? I’ll spoil it for you right now: The answer is, not really. Poke around on the internet and you’ll find a few not-exactly-academic studies trying to trace the success or failure rate through history, ranging from some dude to Bleacher Report. But even the analyses that attempt to reach a broader consensus seem to lack clear conviction.

You can scour the web this time of year and find articles pondering the efficacy of sit-vs.-start for just about every team that has secured a playoff berth. (Why not scour Zone Coverage? We’ve got a few of them ourselves.)

You’ll no doubt find such articles about the Green Bay Packers, although the final results of Week 17 ultimately clarified the picture somewhat. Had the Washington Commanders not beaten the Atlanta Falcons, the debate could have been intense. The difference between the fifth and sixth seed is fairly negligible, while the seventh seed is a different story. Nobody’s eager to play the Philadelphia Eagles on Wild Card weekend.

The Packers and Commanders both play at noon on Sunday, which means neither will have the advantage of waiting to see how the other game plays out. The Commanders play the Dallas Cowboys, or what remains of the now Cooper Rush-led Cowboys. They’re far from inspiring, even if Jerry Jones was pretty excellent in

Maybe this is for the best, because, with just a slight change of trajectory, the Packers might have found themselves with a profound “sit or start?” conundrum with a very specific dimension to it.

Namely, would you want Jordan Love to enter the playoffs with his last in-game action being that performance last Sunday afternoon?

It’s true that Love’s day didn’t end terribly. He finished the game 19 of 30 for 185 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions to boot, good for a 91.7 passer rating. Much of that production came in the fourth quarter when Green Bay’s offense found enough rhythm to turn a blowout into a reasonably close game.

But, oof, that first half. Ten of 18 for 64 yards and no score. That’s bad business, and until well into the third quarter, it seemed as though Love was playing one of his worst games of the season. Yes, there were some drops (hello again, Jayden Reed), but there were also some bad throws and miscues. He didn’t look like the confident young quarterback Packer fans know he can be.

Love almost needs to play this Sunday, but he may have needed to regardless of the Commanders’ record. It would have been a nagging question haunting the week: Can he rebound on his own without grinding out a least a few drives against a sputtering Chicago Bears team that recently lost its defensive … er, mastermind (I guess)? Few teams helped build their opponents’ confidence quite like the Bears. It’s quite a charitable organization, really.

Perhaps it’s for the best that the current NFC scenario clarifies what could have been a real baffler, a tricky dilemma that could have ultimately resulted in a ton of second-guessing.

If Love had played a genuinely good game and the Packers just couldn’t quite top the Vikings, the case for sitting him and accepting whatever their fate may be as the fifth or sixth seed would have been strong. And if Washington had one fewer W, the call for Love to take the risk for a bounce-back performance in Chicago may well have been loud. And, of course, you can’t play your starting quarterback without his full offensive retinue, which would have further complicated the risk equation.

Alas, we can at least now tell poor Yorrick what is to be and is not to be in Week 18, but Love’s play against the Vikings nearly changed the entire question.