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Rob Demowski
CHICAGO — Matt LaFleur couldn’t have made it clearer: He wants to stay green Bay Packers coach.
But lost in Saturday night’s NFC wild-card playoff after blowing an 18-point lead Chicago BearsLaFleur declined to say whether he expected to return next season for an eighth year.
“With all due respect to your question, now is not the time,” LaFleur said immediately after the Packers. 31-27 defeat“I’m just feeling sad for these guys, I can only think about what just happened, and there will be time for that,”
LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst each have one more year remaining on their contracts. First-year team president Ed Policy said before this season that he would prefer not to move a coach or general manager into the so-called off year.
This added pressure to the season, which began with a 9–3–1 record and saw the Packers lose five consecutive games to end the season, although in one of those games – the regular season finale – they rested most of their starters.
LaFleur has a regular season record of 76–40–1 and has led the Packers to the playoffs in six of his seven seasons, but Green Bay has not reached the Super Bowl during his tenure and has not been to the conference championship game since the 2020 season, the second of back-to-back appearances in LaFleur’s first two years.
LaFleur was asked three times about his job security after Saturday’s loss and each time he said it was not the time to discuss it.
However, he explained what the Packers job means to him.
“It means everything to me,” LaFleur said. “In my opinion, this is the greatest organization in the world. It’s very humbling. I’m definitely disappointed right now, mostly disappointed because — well, not mostly — I’m disappointed for everybody associated with the Green Bay Packers. I’m disappointed for our locker room. I’m disappointed for our fans. I’m disappointed for our leadership, all of our staff, everybody associated with the Green Bay Packers right now.”
Such a playoff loss could have long-term implications, and many players have acknowledged this possibility.
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions or anything,” the Packers quarterback. jordan love Said. “We’ll see what happens going forward. That’s the situation at every end of the season, and that’s always the situation in the offseason. We’ll see what comes next, if anything. So, we’ll see.”
Love threw his support behind his only head coach in the NFL.
“I definitely think Matt should be the head coach,” Love said. “I love Matt a lot, and I think he does a good job. And that’s all.”
second year security evan williams Agree.
“He’s our leader,” Williams said. “That’s all I’ll tell you. We have full confidence in him, all of his decisions. I can’t speak to any extensions or anything that comes in his future. I know business is business, but he’s been my only head coach and really the only person I need going forward. It feels like he’s done a great job of putting us in a position to win and in scenarios like today, we just have to find a way to finish.”
Saturday’s defeat was full of mistakes and misunderstandings. Love and the offense, featuring LaFleur as the playcaller, could only score six points after scoring touchdowns on the first three drives of the game and took a 21–3 lead into halftime.
LaFleur said that Love “made fun of himself” but also said that he “obviously didn’t do enough work around him.”
It was the second time this season the Packers blew a lead against the Bears. Their overtime loss at Soldier Field in Week 16 was very similar to this one. It cost the Packers the NFC North. This cost him his season.
“We’ve got to do a better job of maintaining our composure as a football team and going out there and doing the fundamental things we practice all the time,” LaFleur said. “I think when you get into big games like this, when you don’t execute the simple fundamentals, it comes back to bite you. That’s exactly what happened.”
His misses to end the season coincided with the defensive end Micah Parsons‘Season-ending knee injury. The Packers did not win a game after Parsons was injured and their defense suffered. Green Bay allowed only 19.0 points per game and 287.2 yards per game through its first 13 games. In the Final Four those numbers increased to 28.8 points per game and 402.6 yards per game.
The Packers gave up 25 points in the fourth quarter, only the third time in NFL history that a team has given up that many points in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.
Packers linebacker, “When you have a team on the ropes, it’s just eliminating them.” Isaiah McDuffie Said. “Its as simple as that.”
Special teams, which had previously hurt the Packers in the postseason, suffered again when it came to kickers. Brandon McManus Missed one extra point attempt and one field goal attempt in the fourth quarter. McManus called it “the biggest disappointment of my career”. It’s just an embarrassment of a performance.
After missing out on last year’s playoffs, Gutekunst said it was time for the Packers to get back to competing for a championship, but after their second consecutive loss in the first round, the Packers could not get closer.
“It’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of work,” LaFleur said. “And we’re not where we wanted to be. I know we battled a lot of adversity this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t do enough to overcome that adversity. It’s all we did together. We have to do more. We have to get better because that’s never an excuse. I know we lost some key players, but you have to find a way to overcome it because I think our team has a lot of talent. It’s just, it is.” gloomy.”
