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Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff Writer
GREEN BAY, Wis. — This might as well be Week 19 of the regular season and not the start of the pressure-packed NFL playoffs. At least that’s Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love’s approach to Sunday’s NFC wild-card game at the Dallas Cowboys (4:30 p.m. ET, Fox) after the first-year starting quarterback led his team into the playoffs.
That comes as no surprise to those who have watched Love all season.
“I feel like he’s always on the same level,” Packers receiver Christian Watson said. “I think I’ve said this since the moment he got the job, that he has like a weird poise about him, even though he’s being thrown into a huge role. He’s kept it throughout the whole season, good and bad, and he’s kept it now. So I think he’s right where he needs to be.”
It will be Love’s first playoff start but not his first time around a team in the postseason. The Packers made the playoffs twice in Love’s three seasons as Aaron Rodgers’ backup.
When asked if he noticed anything extraordinary that Rodgers did to prepare during a playoff week, Love said: “No, I really don’t think there’s anything you change.”
In his three years around Rodgers, Love said they never discussed Rodgers’ first playoff appearance. Love did not even know that it was a 51-45 overtime loss at the Arizona Cardinals in one of the wildest games in Packers’ postseason history.
“I don’t think we ever talked about that one,” Love said.
That’s not to say Love doesn’t understand how difficult it is to make the playoffs as a first-year starting quarterback — something neither Rodgers nor Brett Favre did — or that he won’t have the usual pregame jitters. But his approach is designed to keep everything the same.
“Every game I go through a checklist of what I tell myself, things to try to tell myself to relax, calm down, see the game, let it come to me, and just focus on all the little details that I can focus on, control what I can control,” Love said. “So I don’t think it will be any different than any other game. Obviously, it will be an away game, it will be a loud environment. So just trying to get my feet and get settled into the game will be huge.”
Love rolls into the postseason coming off two straight games for which he was named NFC Offensive Player of the Week, making him the first Packers player since receiver Don Beebe in 1996 to win a player of the week award twice in a row. He’s been arguably as good as any quarterback over the past eight games, with 18 touchdowns and one interception.
Throughout the second half of the season, Love’s leadership has become apparent, too, even if some of the stories behind it have been exaggerated.
Last week, receiver Bo Melton revealed that Love has been hosting dinners and film sessions for the entire offense on Monday nights. On Wednesday, Love clarified that it’s actually only been twice and they watch “Monday Night Football,” — not game film — but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been meaningful.
“I think that speaks volumes,” running back Aaron Jones said. “That’s how you truly come together as a team and get to know each other, bond. You’re playing for each other, but you’ve got to know each other to play for each other.”
“I feel like that’s one of the biggest ways — communion, breaking bread together. Who doesn’t love to eat? Jordan has a nice crib, so we love kicking back over there, playing some pool, watching ‘Monday Night Football,’ whatever it might be. Eating good food, desserts and just enjoying ourselves.”
Love and the Packers’ offense might have something else going for it against the second-seeded and heavily favored Cowboys: a nearly healthy roster. Running back AJ Dillon, who sustained a severe stinger two weeks ago, was the only player who didn’t practice on Wednesday. Even Watson, who has missed the past five games because of a hamstring injury, and fellow receiver Romeo Doubs, who left Sunday’s win over the Bears because he was coughing up blood and had to go to the hospital, practiced on a limited basis.
“I think it’d be great,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said of possibly having his full complement of skill players for the playoffs. “You can never have enough good players. Certainly, I think not having them for quite some time, it creates some challenges in, ‘How do you insert them into the lineup and what exactly are you going to do with them?’ But that’s a good problem to have to figure out.”