GREEN BAY – With Packers quarterback Jordan Love missing out on a turkey leg following last Thanksgiving's win at Detroit, he and his teammates were bound and determined to make sure Love got his just reward this year.
Mission accomplished, and the way Love held that turkey leg aloft as he headed for the Lambeau Field tunnel following Thursday night's 30-17 win over Miami, it looked like a trophy that meant a lot to him.
"It was very delicious," Love said with a pretty big smile from the postgame podium.
Well, Love's play of late has been pretty darn good, too, and it's a big reason the Packers have put themselves in decent position at 9-3 heading into December.
Since getting healthy over the bye week, which helped both Love's knee and groin injuries heal up, he has posted passer ratings of 113.0, 107.7 and 129.2 over his last three games. This after just one triple-digit passer rating in his first seven starts of the season.
That high mark was Thursday night's number, his best of the year, and it finished a run of 10 straight quarters now in which Love hasn't thrown an interception and the Packers' offense hasn't turned the ball over.
"I think he's playing his best ball right now, I really do," Head Coach Matt LaFleur said of his quarterback. "I think he's done a great job of taking what's there, taking the checkdowns when they're there, or taking the shots when they're there."
LaFleur added the focus with Love has been on emphasizing sound fundamentals, and letting the rest emerge. It appears to be working, and it's certainly easier to play fundamentally strong when the legs are healthy as opposed to what Love dealt with for most of the season's first half.
Love's efficiency breeds the same from the entire offense, and there's a lot to like about how that unit is playing lately.
"We're building a good thing on offense right now," Love said. "We're getting in that rhythm, finding that groove, and just got to keep being consistent."
The ride isn't entirely smooth yet – the offense was flagged for three more penalties Thursday night, two of them false starts in the first half – but it sure seems like it's starting to resemble last year's late-season run.
Aside from the significant reduction in turnovers, the offense also has been punching the ball in with more regularity. A few weeks ago, the Packers sat at 29th in the league in red-zone offense, but they've scored TDs on 11 of their last 15 trips inside the opponent's 20.
"Being able to run the ball has been huge down there, just giving the ball to Josh Jacobs and letting him go to work," Love said. "There's things that we're gonna keep building on and keep striving for, but I like what we're doing right now. It's been an area that we said we need to improve on, and I think we've improved."
Speaking of Jacobs, the combination of his physicality and elusiveness continues to be a feature both as a runner and receiver. While he had to fight valiantly for every one of his 43 rushing yards in the game, he put up 74 receiving yards thanks to a 49-yard catch and run in the fourth quarter that featured a jump cut that had the defense flailing in his wake.
"It was nasty. It was very nasty," Love said of Jacobs' open-field move. "It's fun to watch a guy like that."
A physical style to the Packers' game is showing up across the board. LaFleur lauded the defense's work up front the past couple of games – Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa was sacked five times, four of them by down linemen – as well as the blocking on offense from the perimeter players.
Then there's a tone-setter like tight end Tucker Kraft, who never makes it easy on any would-be tackler.
"He's another guy who loves that contact and loves trying to run guys over," Love said. "It just gives everybody a little bit of juice when you do that."
The offense as a whole seems to have found that bounce in its step at the right time. The plane for first-place Detroit leaves next Wednesday.
"We'll take it another week at a time, and we know who we got this week coming up," Love said. "Obviously they got us the first game. So we'll look at everything, look at all the film, and, you know, put our game plan together.
"But I think just the rhythm we're finding on offense right now, the way the defense is playing, I think we're in a good spot."
