Love leads the NFL in passing attempts more than 20 yards downfield (40), passing attempts more than 30 yards downfield (20), passing attempts more than 40 yards downfield (12), and passing attempts more than 50 yards downfield (4).

Love is also responsible for one of my single favorite football sequences of all time: Earlier this year, when he completed a 43-yard touchdown pass to J. Michael Sturdivant that was overruled due to pass interference, then, backed up by 10 yards, simply threw a 53-yard touchdown pass to Christian Watson.

That second touchdown was the longest pass completed this year, a 66.9-yard touchdown pass to Christian Watson; it’s the third-longest completion on record. It didn’t fit on the NFL’s NextGenStats passing chart.

Part of the reason for Love’s deep ball success is the Packers’ receiving duo of Christian Watson and Matthew Golden, who combined for 331 of the Packers’ 373 receiving yards on Sunday. Both of them are ideal deep ball threats — Watson is 6-foot-4 and ran a 4.36-second 40-yard dash; Golden had one of the fastest 40s in years at 4.29 seconds.

Can they catch footballs thrown their way? Well, sometimes. All their skill tree points went into “running fast downfield,” which is pretty sick.

Another reason: The Green Bay Packers essentially do not run the football, at all. They’re literally dead last in rushing. Last year, the team that was dead last in rushing was the Raiders, who went 3-14 and had the #1 pick. The Packers might win the Super Bowl that way.

This isn’t supposed to work! In recent years, the trend in the NFL has been downward; teams are throwing the ball shorter and running the ball more. The average depth of target has gone from 8.8 yards per attempt in 2011 to 7.6 in 2026; teams are running the ball more and passing less.

And yet, the Packers are thriving by forgetting about the run game and bombing the ball deep. It’s my duty to support them.

Let us track the full story of the Eagles’ backup QB position in 2026: In the offseason, the Eagles traded for Andy Dalton to be QB2. While the Eagles had a slew of younger QB prospects, Dalton was a veteran with 15 years of NFL experience who would be trustworthy and reliable if anything went wrong with Hurts.

When he was actually called upon, though, Dalton was basically the opposite of trustworthy. He came in to the team’s Monday Night Football game against the Bears when Hurts was taken out of the game with a potential concussion, instantly threw a goal-line interception that wrecked an Eagles scoring chance, and then left the game.

The Eagles released Dalton shortly after that, meaning he will finish his Eagles career 0-for-1 with an interception. While there are actually hundreds of NFL players who have had a season where they went 0-for-1 with an interception, most were non-quarterbacks who took part in a trick play that went bad; only eight true quarterbacks have pulled it off. Dalton is the first since Feleipe Franks in 2021, although Franks has since been converted to tight end.

The Eagles cut Dalton on Oct. 9. Then Hurts was ruled out with blood clots from Philadelphia’s game on Oct. 15, and announced as out for the year on Oct. 19. The Eagles allegedly tried to get Dalton back, but he “politely declined” and signed with the Falcons instead.

Damn. Turned down for the Falcons.

When Hurts actually went down with his season-ending injury, the Eagles turned to Tanner McKee, who has been with the team since 2023. Thanks to some strong preseason performances and a couple of appearances in Week 17 and 18 of the 2024 season, a narrative developed that McKee was actually a starting-quality QB who teams sought on the trade market but the Eagles were unwilling to part with.

However, when the time actually came for McKee to start for the Eagles, he went 0-3 with some of the league’s worst stats. Of 32 quarterbacks who have thrown enough passes to qualify this season, McKee is lowest in yards per attempt, QBR, and touchdown rate. (He’s 28th in passer rating and 29th in success rate, so he’s got that going for him.)

So the Eagles benched McKee and turned to Joe Milton, who they signed off the Eagles’ practice squad. Look, I am an adamant Joe Milton believer. He can throw the ball really hard and run really fast. Also, he once had a really really really really cool highlight with the Patriots. I don’t care that he has never actually been good at football; I’m all in.

Sadly, my beloved Big Throw Joe did not save the Eagles. Milton averaged fewer yards per attempt than McKee’s league-worst mark; he gained 64 rushing yards but also got sacked seven times for a loss of 41 yards.

Meanwhile, this whole time, sixth-round draft pick Cole Payton has been on the Eagles roster. The Eagles made the unusual call to carry four quarterbacks on their active roster this season, and Payton was the fourth. A rookie out of North Dakota State — Carson Wentz U! — the Eagles are apparently committed to keeping Payton on the roster to prevent other teams from poaching him off the practice squad, but are unwilling to actually let him play in the games.

Again: I don’t think there’s an answer here that would have Fixed This. There are only so many starting-quality quarterbacks on the planet; it’s not exactly a failure when a team can’t secure two of them. The Eagles could have handled this backup QB position just fine and still been on a seven-game losing streak.

But the way the Eagles have operated projects an image of incompetence. They’ve second-guessed their own decisions; they’ve made mistakes and instantly regretted them; they’ve clearly misevaluated the talent in their building; they’ve wasted spots on their roster.

This was the first NFL game with a 38-17 final score since 2019, when the Buccaneers beat the Lions in Week 15. The nearly seven-year gap between Fetty Wappings is the longest since the AFL/NFL merger; there was a seven-year gap from 1968 to 1975 as well.

However, the Buccaneers were on the road in that game. That means the scoreboard looked like this:

There have been a grand total of 46 NFL games with a 17-38 final score. Of those, 33 were home wins, which count as True Fetty Wappings. The most prolific season in Fetty Wapping history was 2014, when four games ended with a 17-38 final score. This makes sense, because 2014 is also the year Fetty Wap released “Trap Queen,” the song that caused me to be like this.

It seems Fetty Wapping ebbs and flows with the highs and lows of Fetty Wap’s life. The seven-year gap between 17-38 games coincided with Fetty Wap’s 2021 arrest for drug trafficking and subsequent imprisonment; he was released earlier this year after serving three years of a six-year sentence.

And the return of the NFL Fetty Wapping has coincided with a joyous event in the life of Fetty Wap himself: He got married this week! The Fetty Wedding was on Thursday; congratulations to Mr. Wap and his Trap Queen.

As an aging internetsman, I have seen many a bit run its course. Over the last nine years, my jokes about 17-38 scores have gotten less popular. The reposts and likes are winding down; the “What is Fetty Wapping?” posts are becoming more and more frequent. The Youngs are too young to remember Fetty Wap, whose brief run of hits was almost entirely contained in 2015; the rest of us are growing too old to remember anything at all. Perhaps, I wonder, whether it’s time to retire the bit.

But then I remember: Once upon a time, a young singer-rapper from New Jersey made a decision. Instead of saying his own name at the beginning of his songs, he was going to sing a year almost three centuries in the past, commemorating the time a French king issued a decree celebrating a cognac brand. Surely, he had to reconsider his decision every time he stepped up to the microphone.

And perhaps the San Francisco 49ers sometimes wonder: Why the hell are we called the 49ers? It seems absurd that there’s an NFL team named after a gold rush from almost 200 years ago, and yet they play every weekend.

Meaning fades. Tradition continues. The Era of Fetty Wapping has just begun.