By Paul Bretl: 7/23/2024
With Jordan Love not practicing until a new deal gets done, Sean Clifford now has the opportunity to work with the first-team offense.
“Excited. Excited,” said Sean Clifford at his locker on Monday. “I don’t think you know as a backup, you’ve got to be. You probably wouldn’t be in this position if you weren’t. so excited to just have the opportunity to get a few extra reps, especially with the 1s and all in all I thought it was a good day.”
Minicamp didn’t go how Clifford would have hoped. On the first day he threw three interceptions–all to Zayne Anderson–and then he threw another to Robert Rochell on Day 2.
However, while obviously not the showing Clifford wanted to have, he wasn’t going to dwell on it either. He spoke with Matt LaFleur, Jordan Love, and offensive assistant Sean Mannion about what went wrong, diagnosed the problem, and moved on ready to correct it.
“I didn’t play my best football the last two days, which is frustrating because I felt like I was making a lot of progress the first two weeks,” Clifford said back in early June. “There’s a little bit of overthinking. It comes down to reading with my feet. I’m trying to make that next step. I feel like when I get up to the line, I can really see the call, feel the defense, but then there’s also that other part of overthinking.
“The last week, I just got into that overthinking, slower in my reads, not giving guys as much of a chance.”
One of the intangible traits that we’ve often heard LaFleur use to describe Clifford is his resiliency. We saw this during his preseason debut in 2023 against Cincinnati, where, despite throwing a pair of interceptions, Clifford bounced back each time, and overall, he completed 77 percent of his passes at 8.0 yards per attempt with a touchdown.
During Monday’s first training camp practice, we again saw that bounce-back ability Clifford possesses. It was a shorter practice, with the team only working in the red zone during 11-on-11 drills. The defensive front did a very good job of making things difficult for Clifford and the offense, with Rashan Gary, Colby Wooden, Lukas Van Ness, and Kingsley Enagbare all generating pressures.
However, Clifford’s experience in the system, and knowing where to go with the ball, along wit his ability to adjust on the fly, helped him navigate those situations. Not to say that every throw was perfect, there were of course incomplete passes. But there weren’t any turnovers and Clifford threw three touchdowns, two of which were incredibly well placed balls into tight windows.
“I missed one to Wicks,” said Clifford, “kind of side-armed it, thought I could’ve gotten that one back, and then I thought Romeo won on a spot route in the red zone, I thought I potentially could have plugged it.
“But other than that, it was just honestly trying to stay within my footwork, get back to the basics. I felt in OTAs I was really trying to be a little bit more aggressive and see what I can and can’t do. I think y’all saw that in minicamp, I threw too many interceptions. Now it’s all about getting back to the basics and checking the ball down when I need to and being a smart quarterback.”
Clifford playing with the ones not only gives him the opportunity to go up against the Packers top defenders, but on the offensive side of the football, it’s a very different atmosphere than playing with the more inexperienced players on the second unit, allowing Clifford hone in on other aspects of his game.
“To be honest with you, it’s pretty electric just,” Clifford said, “because you can really get after your cadence because those guys are veterans and you can really start to be a little bit more aggressive on certain things. Because when you’ve got rookies—and I was there last year—you kind of have to go on 1, maybe 2 every once in awhile, you’ve really, really got to tell everybody, ‘Hey, this is going to be on 2.’ But when you’re with the 1s, those guys are vets.
“So you’re able to spice it up, really try some things out there. so I was going on triple counts and doing some fun stuff that I haven’t been able to do in the past. But no, no nerves. Football’s football. I’m just excited to be out there.”
LaFleur said that as long as the Packers are without Love, the reps between Clifford and Pratt will be a 50/50 split. Clifford will be taking all the first-team reps, but LaFleur did add that “everything’s a competition,” so that is subject to change based on how he and Pratt are performing.
It was a good first day for Clifford as he led the No. 1 offense for the first time, but one day doesn’t make or break a player during training camp. It’s about putting together a consistent body of work, so the next step for Clifford is to build upon Monday’s performance for however long he’s taking those starting snaps.
“Sean, last year I thought did an excellent job coming in here and winning the backup job,” said GM Brian Gutekunst. “You guys saw him in the preseason, kind of his ability to compete and handle the moment. I think we expected that a little bit with the amount of football he played at Penn State in a major college situation like that and I think he continues to grow on that. So excited for him to see what he can do in Year 2.”