Packers' Jordan Love on 113-Hit Pace Behind Struggling Offensive Line
The short version
- Green Bay is 1-2 after a 35-14 home loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
- Jordan Love leads the NFL with 65 completions on 124 attempts, 844 passing yards and six touchdowns.
- Love has been hit 20 times in three games, a pace of 113 hits over a 17-game season, per a tally posted by Zach Kruse.
- His previous single-season high for hits is 49, recorded in both 2024 and 2025, after 42 in 2023.
- The Packers entered 2026 expecting to contend for a Super Bowl after an early exit the prior year.
Green Bay has stumbled to 1-2, and quarterback Jordan Love has already absorbed 20 hits behind an offensive line that has him on pace for 113 this season.
Three weeks into the 2026 NFL season, the Green Bay Packers are still searching for answers. The club sits at 1-2 after a 35-14 home defeat against the Atlanta Falcons, a result that extended a stretch of disjointed offensive play. Little about the start resembled what a team with openly stated title ambitions had in mind.
Those ambitions were voiced all summer. From the offseason through training camp, executives, coaches and players throughout the organization described a roster built to contend for a Super Bowl. Their view was that the issues that ended the 2025 campaign prematurely had been corrected, the roster's flaws addressed, and a return to first place in the NFC North the logical next step.
The early returns have contradicted nearly all of it. Green Bay's offense has seldom looked this out of sync in recent years, though the quarterback position is not where the trouble originates. Jordan Love currently sits first in the NFL in completions (65), pass attempts (124), passing yards (844) and touchdown passes (six).
The problems begin up front. The Packers' offensive line has performed below even the gloomiest outside projections, with opposing rushers reaching the backfield inside 2.5 seconds. Collapses that fast leave Love with almost no opportunity to set himself before delivering the ball, and they go a long way toward explaining the unit's broader struggles.
The physical toll is accumulating quickly. Defenders have hit Love 20 times across the season's first three games, according to a season-by-season tally posted September 26 by Zach Kruse. Should that rate hold and Love play a full 17-game schedule, the year would finish with 113 hits.
History supplies the context that makes the number alarming. Love absorbed 42 hits in 2023 and 49 in each of 2024 and 2025, making 49 his heaviest single-season total to date. His 20 hits through three weeks already represent more than a third of that figure, and the current trajectory would more than double it.
Reversing the trend will not be simple. No evident solution to the protection problems has surfaced through three weeks, and the offense's core deficiencies remain on display. How Love and the rest of the group arrive at fixes is, at this point, an unresolved question.
Time remains for a turnaround. Fourteen games are left on Green Bay's schedule, and any realistic path to rescuing the season runs through markedly better offensive line play. Without that improvement, the quarterback currently producing at the top of the league's passing charts will keep absorbing the consequences of the roster's weakest unit.
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