Forget the interceptions: Jordan Love's upside could translate to stardom

Every so often in the past year, as Jordan Love entered his junior season to Heisman Trophy hype and then led the NCAA in interceptions, he reminded people of his bewitching upside with a single magnificent throw.

Nov. 16, 2019: Utah State vs. Wyoming. Love's Aggies trailed 7-0 in the second quarter when he took a shotgun snap, threaded a pass with zip between the cornerback and safety at the far sideline, and hit his No. 1 receiver in stride, affording Siaosi Mariner 60 yards of daylight to sprint to the end zone.

"It was a play that not very many people could make," Utah State head coach Gary Andersen said recently. "That ball came out different, to say the least."

Oct. 19, 2019: Utah State vs. Nevada. Andersen's quarterback was a middling 12-for-30 when, late in a Mountain West Conference matchup his team had nonetheless dominated, he hurled from a standstill an arcing bomb 55 yards downfield - to the precise point where Mariner's post route diverged from his defender.

"We don't have to watch any other play for the rest of this game," ESPNU analyst and former NFL linebacker Kirk Morrison said on the broadcast. "That throw is the NFL throw."

June 28, 2019: The Manning Passing Academy in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Peyton and Eli were there; so were celebrated college QBs like Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert, and Heisman winner-to-be Joe Burrow. Love, another Division I invitee, considered the event an opportunity to show he belonged among the big dogs despite hailing from a non-Power 5 program; Utah State had been the lone FBS school to offer him a scholarship.

Anyone on the Nicholls State University field who didn't know the scale of Love's arm strength was brought to speed when he chucked what Steve Calhoun, his longtime private trainer in California, described in an interview as his "drop-the-mic" pass. Love backpedaled five steps and slung a 25-yard arrow to the sideline, eschewing airtime to deliver the ball through Cover 2 coverage as fast as possible.

Witnesses, the brothers Manning among them, "were just kind of looking at each other like, 'Wow. OK. That was different,'" recalled Calhoun, who was also in attendance.

"Those are the types of things that (make) people gravitate to Jordan and go, 'OK, man, he's a wild card in this draft,'" Calhoun said. "He really can be something special."

"Can be" is a powerful operative phrase; it explains why Love might hear his name called well before the first round of the NFL draft wraps up in Roger Goodell's basement Thursday night. Love isn't Burrow, the class of 2020's surefire franchise QB, but his potential transfixes. He's 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, nimble in the pocket with the confidence and accuracy on the move to salvage scrambled plays. He can fit the ball, with force and catchable touch, through fleeting gaps in the defense most anywhere in front of him. Those brilliant moments above attest to as much.

It's become voguish for draftniks to call Love this year's most polarizing prospect, certainly at his position. At minimum, it seems likely he'll be one of the first four QBs off the board, along with Burrow, Herbert, and Tua Tagovailoa. Where exactly that lands him will hinge on teams' trust that brilliance can become his standard, as it was at Utah State in 2018 but less so last season.

After Love tossed 32 TDs to only six interceptions as a sophomore, his 17 picks were most in FBS in 2019, betraying the concerns - that he telegraphs too many decisions or too often makes the wrong ones - that turns evaluating him into a dichotomous exercise. His junior year produced five multi-interception games, hardly the anticipated outcome when Utah State mailed candy hearts to Heisman voters to advocate for Love in the preseason.

And yet: high ceilings tend to be tempting. Dez Bryant is a fan ("Whoever drafts Jordan Love from Utah state ... you got yourself an elite QB," the former All-Pro wideout tweeted this winter), and it's also become voguish to compare Love to Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, if mainly for stylistic similarities. Beyond their praise for Love as a model teammate and able leader, his coaches coalesce behind the belief that, given the right surroundings, he'll shine on Sundays.

"People have not seen the best of Jordan Love. They've seen flashes of it," Calhoun said. "Whatever staff that gets him, (if they) can really understand his strengths, just like coach Andy Reid does with Patrick Mahomes - he really puts him in situations that allow his skill set to help their offense and their team win ball games - I can see the same thing with Jordan."

Such heights seemed impossibly distant when Love started working with Calhoun as a young high schooler in Bakersfield, California. Love wasn't available for an interview, but an NFL.com story published in February depicted the inauspicious start to his Liberty High School football career. Standing 5-foot-6 and weighing 130 pounds at the outset of ninth grade, Love figured he'd be best off playing receiver - or, failing that, basketball - rather than forging ahead as the team's backup quarterback.

Love was close with his father, Orbin, a police officer, youth pastor, and former juco running back who died by suicide when Love was 14. He nearly quit football shortly after Orbin's funeral in the summer of 2013, doubting his prospects at QB despite his dad's supreme faith in his abilities. Love's mother, Anna, also a police officer, encouraged him to hang in another season. Listening to her enabled Love to win the JV starting job as a 10th grader. Galvanized by a growth spurt, he did the same on Liberty's varsity squad the following year.

"He has an unbelievable mother," said Andersen, the Utah State coach. "They've been through a lot as a family, and I think Jordan is a kid who's capable of handling tough situations."

Love's standing as a spindly two-star late bloomer didn't win him wide notice in recruiting circles, but he did attract the interest of Matt Wells, Andersen's predecessor with the Aggies. Upon his arrival in Logan, Utah, Love sat out a season and took over at starter as a redshirt freshman midway through 2017, a prelude to his subsequent star turn. 2018 is when Love, fully grown into his frame, broke out in earnest: his 32 passing TDs were eighth in the country as Utah State went 11-2, ranked No. 2 nationwide in scoring, peaked at No. 14 in the AP Poll, and crushed North Texas 52-13 in the New Mexico Bowl.

Wells departed before the bowl game to sign as head coach at Texas Tech, and when Utah State reconvened under Andersen's watch in 2019 with nine new offensive starters - everyone but Love and his left tackle - a commensurate step back followed. Love threw three interceptions apiece against a range of opponents: Wake Forest in the season opener, BYU in November, and LSU in between, a few months before Burrow and the Tigers won the national title. Utah State finished 7-6 and lost 51-41 to Kent State in the Frisco Bowl, where Love's college career, at least, ended on a relative high: he completed 77% of his passes for 317 yards the week after he declared for the draft.

To what degree can Love's downtick be contextualized? Where skeptics watched his tape and saw carelessness with the ball, Mike Sanford, Utah State's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2019, said Love's willingness to push the envelope maximized the Aggies' chances to win. To ESPN draft analyst Jim Nagy, the former NFL scout who is now the executive director of the Senior Bowl, the dearth of playmakers around Love last season suggests he'll be the rare QB whose throwing windows actually widen as a pro.

"To me, he was forcing balls out of necessity this year, not because he didn't know what he was looking at," Nagy said. "Now, were there some head-scratcher throws in there? Sure, there were. But when guys are dropping balls on you and you're constantly under duress, it's a hard position to play."

If Mahomes is the gold-standard Love analog, Love's trajectory - his light recruitment; his surge to prominence in the MWC - has also elicited comparisons to that of Josh Allen, who the Bills drafted seventh overall in 2018 despite his statistical regression in his last NCAA season at Wyoming. Player comps are generally inexact, but they can illustrate, for instance, the breadth of career outcomes that line the boom-or-bust spectrum. Allen now starts for a playoff team (albeit one powered by its defense). On the bottom end are failed first-rounders such as Paxton Lynch or those, like Josh Rosen, having trouble finding a foothold in the pros.

Perhaps the specter of busts past is what prompted an NFL assistant coach to opine to Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman that Love should "maybe" be a fourth-round pick. Ditto for the scout who told ESPN's Laura Rutledge that he wasn't sure Love deserves to be drafted at all.

Setting aside these radical outliers, prevailing opinion has Love going somewhere in Round 1.

"He's a first-round quarterback all the way," Nagy said, though scenarios abound within that classification. Maybe the Dolphins or Chargers nab Love as early as No. 5 or No. 6. Maybe, as ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr. projects, the Raiders take him at No. 19. Maybe the Patriots or Saints, picturing futures beyond Tom Brady and Drew Brees, snap him up at No. 23 or No. 24 or trade up to ensure they aren't scooped. In the successor vein, NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah has him heading to the Packers at No. 30 to understudy Aaron Rodgers.

"He's so talented. He's got size. He's athletic. He throws the ball effortlessly," Nagy said. "He's got the ability to be one of the top quarterbacks in the league if everything comes together for him."

Regardless of his landing place, Love's coaches have envisioned the contours of an optimal path forward for him. Calhoun said he's suited to run an offense that empowers and relies on its QB to control tempo and make all manner of throws, as, again, the Chiefs do with Mahomes. Andersen thinks Love's college experience indicates he'll accept and adjust to any role he's assigned, be it that of rookie starter or backup pupil to an established veteran.

"He came up through the ranks at Utah State," Andersen said. "He built himself up from a skinny kid who had to wait his time to play, and he took advantage of it."

Physically, Sanford said, Love is ready to start in the NFL, though he figures some time on the bench - time to further understand defensive structures, to brush up on the finer points of changing protections at the line of scrimmage - would benefit Love as it would many college QBs. Informing Sanford's perspective is the belated education of the Raiders' DeShone Kizer, the second-round pick from 2017 he used to coach at Notre Dame, and who's appeared in just three games since starting and struggling his whole rookie year for an 0-16 Browns team.

"It's tough. You get thrown to the wolves, and it's almost like the script is written before the opportunity to really develop happens," Sanford said. "I always hope for quarterbacks that they have the ability to go and get seasoned for at least half a season of learning the game and getting fully immersed into it."

In January, two weeks after Love's last game as an Aggie, Sanford left Utah State to become offensive coordinator at the University of Minnesota. His lone year in Logan led him to appreciate Love's signature skill: that propensity for wild throws that wowed everyone almost daily at practice. He has his own favorite example from 2019 - a touchdown in the Aggies' home opener against Stony Brook, when Love, pressured on a rollout to his left, flicked the ball from his back foot 40 yards in the air straight into Mariner's arms.

That happy memory - there's that upside again - mingles with Sanford's broader recollection of just how likeable he found his QB. Love took care to connect with the coach's young sons and daughter, bending to play with them on their level when he visited the Sanford family home. The kids still talk about him, Sanford said, and not because of any deep post pass he whipped across his body.

"I just think that's something you see so consistently with him: his quality as a human being," Sanford said. "It's who he is. He was raised the right way, and he's an absolute joy to be around. Somebody's going to be very happy when they draft him. I promise you that."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.