Arizona spent a premium pick on him with a veteran runner and a former Day 2 back already in the room, and it barely mattered. By the time preseason opened, beat reporters were already calling him the soon-to-be lead back, and he backed it up against the Raiders with more touches than any other back on the field before a high-ankle sprain ended his night. Coach Mike LaFleur has since said surgery isn't needed, and the plan is still for Love to be the guy when the games count.
What makes him worth building around is that there's no hole in the game. He's a north-south runner with the top-end speed to turn a crease into a house call, but Notre Dame trusted him just as much on third downs, where he catches the ball like a receiver instead of an emergency check-down and holds up in protection. That's the projection the Cardinals bought with the pick: not a change-of-pace piece next to a veteran, but the back built to take every kind of down away from the rest of the room.
The swing factor is the ankle. High-ankle sprains have a habit of lingering into the season even without surgery, and a rookie who loses install time and conditioning reps in August is exactly the kind of player who opens on a snap count. He's also never taken a live NFL hit — the receiving work, the protection assignments, all of it is projection off college tape until it survives an NFL front. If the backup options in Arizona's room are healthier out of the gate, the staff has somewhere to lean while Love finds his legs.
The back he's really being measured against is Kyren Williams, who has no real competition and enters the year with a known, settled workload in a scheme built around him — vision and contact balance in a grinding rushing attack, about as safe a job as the position offers. Love's ceiling is higher; nobody in that Rams backfield threatens to turn a 5-yard gain into a touchdown the way Love can, and nobody catches the ball the way he's capable of. But Williams' job is already decided, and Love still has an injury and a full NFL season to answer for before his is.
