Kyle McCord Throws 4 Touchdowns in Packers Preseason Win Over Cardinals: Rookie QB Makes His Case
Kyle McCord is making it very hard to ignore him.
The Green Bay Packers rookie quarterback threw four touchdowns in Green Bay’s 42-38 preseason finale win over the Arizona Cardinals, capping a summer where he has looked poised, decisive, and comfortable in the NFL offense. That is not a normal preseason for a rookie backup.
It is exactly the kind of performance that gets people talking around a franchise.
Let’s be clear about what preseason production actually means. Backups are throwing against backups. Play-callers are keeping the scheme vanilla. Defensive coordinators are not scheming for you. McCord’s four touchdowns do not translate into a promise of NFL stardom.
But they do tell you a few things.
They tell you McCord has command of the offense. To throw four touchdowns in a preseason game, a quarterback has to be operating cleanly at the line, getting the ball out on time, and making the right reads on his progressions. McCord did that. He did it against a team that was fighting for its own roster spots and playing hard.
They tell you the Packers’ backup quarterback situation is set. There was some question in camp about how the QB2 depth chart would shake out. McCord has answered it. If Jordan Love goes down, the Packers have a rookie they trust running the offense.
They also tell you that the Packers’ offensive infrastructure is in a good place. Head coach Matt LaFleur runs a system that has produced good quarterback play for years, from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love, and now a rookie is coming in and making it look easy. That reflects on the system as much as it does on McCord.
Ok, now let’s talk about Jordan Love.
Love got the unusual assignment of calling his own plays in the preseason finale. That was LaFleur betting on his starter’s growth and his football IQ. It was a public vote of confidence. But it is impossible to ignore that Love’s confidence pat comes in the same summer where a rookie backup is throwing four touchdowns in preseason games and drawing rave reviews.
That is not a controversy. Yet.
Love is the starting quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. He has earned that role. His 2023 season was fantastic. He is entering his third full year as a starter and the Packers are counting on him to lead them to serious NFC North contention.
But if Love struggles this year, and McCord looks like this every time he touches the field, the Green Bay quarterback conversation is going to get very uncomfortable. The Packers famously drafted Love while Rodgers was still their starter, and everyone knows how that eventually played out.
The best-case scenario is that Love plays at a high level, McCord grows on the bench, and the Packers have a functional quarterback pipeline for the next decade. That is what LaFleur is trying to build.
The worst case is that Love plateaus while McCord looks ready to play, and Green Bay is once again facing a difficult quarterback decision earlier than expected.
Nobody in Green Bay wants that conversation. But McCord threw four touchdowns on Saturday. He is going to keep making the case.
Something to keep an eye on.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
