2020 NFL Draft: Utah State QB Jordan Love scouting report

Jordan Love Background

Jordan Love was born on November 2nd, 1998 in Bakersfield, California. The biggest thing you need to know about Love is that he has overcome incredible odds to become the first-round 2020 NFL Draft prospect he is today.

His father, Orbin Love, played running back at the Junior College level before becoming a police officer in the Bakersfield. Jordan had been an athletic teenager, having played basketball and wide receiver before his father encouraged him to play quarterback as a teenager.

Jordan Love experienced an overwhelmingly traumatic event when his father took his own life at just the age of 14. In 2018, Jordan commented on the death for The Salt Lake Tribune: “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever faced …He’s the reason I play quarterback, he was a huge influence in my life.”

Despite facing such an incomprehensible tragedy at such a young age, Jordan Love continued to play football. When Love reached high school, he decided to dedicate himself to playing quarterback. According to The Salt Lake Tribune article mentioned earlier, Love and his father wanted Jordan to be “where all the action initiated from”.

Love played for two seasons at Liberty High School in Bakersfield as the starting quarterback.  During his two seasons as a starter, he logged 42 touchdowns to 16 interceptions, with 4,078 total passing yards and 1,190 rushing yards. Although he only had a completion percentage of 51 percent in high school, his average depth of pass was almost 19 yards, and his longest pass went for 97 yards, according to MaxPreps. This is what we call foreshadowing.

The team went 10-4 and finished first place of the Southwest Yosemite League in 2015. Love led the team to the California Central Section Championship in both years he played for Liberty. Love started his career in Liberty at 5-foot-6; he graduated high school at 6-foot-3.

After visiting Utah State for a football camp, Love committed to the school in 2014. Despite leading his high school football team to two championships, he only received five offer sheets from college programs, none of them from a Power Five football team.

In 2017, redshirt freshman Love threw just 8 touchdowns to 6 interceptions with a 54 percent completion rate and had an otherwise unremarkable season. The 2018 season is where Love’s production exploded, earning 32 touchdowns to just 6 interceptions, increasing his passing yards from 1,631 yards to 3,550 yards, leading the team to an 11-2 record. Utah State finished the season on the Top 25 Associated Press Poll for only the second season since 1961.

Utah State had some extraordinary games in 2018, with seven games scoring more than 50 points including a whopping 73 points against Tennessee Tech. Love averaged 294.2 passing yards a game and finished 2018 with a 64% completion percentage and a 158.3 Quarterback Rating.

Love went into the 2019 season as one of the hottest quarterback prospects in all of college football. But to say Utah State owes all its success in 2018 to Love would be misleading. Matt Wells, the team’s head coach in 2018, left to become the head coach of Texas Tech at the end of the season. Wells had led the team to four bowl games in five seasons.

His replacement for 2019 was Gary Andersen, a defensive line assistant for the Utah Utes, who had been Utah State’s previous head coach before Wells from 2009-2012. Andersen left Utah State to become the head coach of Wisconsin (2013-2014), Oregon State (2015-2017) before leaving in the aftermath of leaked text messages where Andersen made disparaging remarks about assistant coaches.

Andersen was widely credited for turning around the Aggies program in 2013, but as a previous defensive coordinator, many wondered how much Andersen would be able to advance Love’s skill sets in 2019. Andersen had only one winning season for the Aggies his first time coaching and a 7-23 record while coaching the Oregon State Beavers.

While Utah State’s 2019 record was hardly a failure, going 7-5 and missing the Mountain West Championship is largely considered a step backward for the program. In football, it is rarely one thing that takes a winning team and drags them back to mediocrity. Having all new assistant coaches did not help.

The running game took a big step back in 2019, going from 37 rushing touchdowns in 2018 to just 16 in 2019. It also didn’t help that the offensive line from 2018 that provided Love with so much protection had multiple players graduate or transfer, with only his left tackle returning for 2019. The rest of the offensive line positions went to redshirt freshmen.

Love still completed the season with a 60% completion percentage, but his interceptions increased from six the previous season to 16 in 2019. On top of that, Love spent much more time being harassed in the pocket, getting sacked 16 times in 2019, as opposed to nine times in 2018 according to ESPN. Because of this Love scrambled more than he had the previous season. In 2018, Love ran 43 times for seven touchdowns. In 2019, Love ran 71 times for zero touchdowns.

Despite all that pressure and having to make plays outside the pocket, Love still finished the 2019 regular season with 3,085 yards passing. Considering in 2018 Love threw for 3,567 yards, it is clear that not all of Utah State’s regression can be blamed on Love.

Love has shown that he has the potential to be an exceptional quarterback when the circumstances are right. While 2019 might have been a regression for the young quarterback, what is enticing to NFL scouts in the 2020 NFL Draft is Love’s 2018 season. His combination of being a dual-threat quarterback with deep-throw accuracy are skills that are sought after in the NFL.

The 2019 season might have been a less productive year for Love, but coaching changes and a depleted roster can explain much of this season’s problems. In the 2020 NFL Draft, scouts and general managers will be far more interested in what Love showed on tape in 2018.