Packers' Jordan Love not worried about playing with thumb injury - ESPN

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Jordan Love was still wearing a brace on his surgically repaired left thumb and continued to hand off using only his right hand, but otherwise the Green Bay Packers quarterback doesn't believe any of that will limit what he can do when the regular season starts.

Love said that he has «no concerns» ahead of the Sept. 7 opener against the Detroit Lions but that the thumb will have to be protected using a brace similar to what he has worn in practice.

«It'll be some weeks having to brace it up and just keep it protected,» Love said Thursday. «It's one of those things, we'll play it by ear, as I start getting into games and seeing how it feels, as you get back to live contact. But there'll be some time having that brace still.

On Thursday, coach Matt LaFleur put the Packers through a simulated game, which is the closest thing Love will get to real game action. Love only began taking part in full-team (11-on-11) periods a day earlier. Before that, he was not taking snaps from under center or in the shotgun but rather was just holding the ball or picking it up to simulate the snap and was doing only individual and 7-on-7.

After Thursday's practice, Love offered additional details as to why he opted to have surgery instead of trying to play through it.

»If you have no stability there, you have no strength as well," Love said. «So it was pretty much just a limp thumb. I couldn't really do much with it, and it's just something that I wasn't, before the season, I'm not trying to be dealing with that throughout the course of the season. Who knows if that would have kept getting reinjured, kept getting messed up, and who knows how that would have been going through a whole season? So I think, and the doctors'