At Crossroads Again, Packers Take Familiar Path

Let’s go back in time, shall we?

Jan. 19, 2015. The Green Bay Packers are at a crossroads moment just one day after improbably blowing a 19-7 lead in the final 4 minutes of the NFC Championship Game in Seattle.

A comedy of errors was made down the stretch and, ultimately, the Packers lost in overtime, left wondering what could have been had they advanced to the Super Bowl.

There were two schools of thought at the time.

One was that the Packers had a 12-point lead in the final minutes of an NFC Championship Game, and that blowing such a lead should warrant the firing of coach Mike McCarthy.

The flipside of that argument is they were mere minutes away from going to the Super Bowl. Perhaps continuity was just what the team needed to get over the hump.

In hindsight, it turns out a change likely would have been warranted.

McCarthy would coach three more full seasons and most of a fourth before being dismissed after a loss to the lowly Cardinals at Lambeau Field late in the 2018 season. McCarthy’s record during that span was 31-28-1. He reached the playoffs twice, including a supernova run by Aaron Rodgers during the famous run-the-table stretch in 2016.

Would the Packers have been better off with a different head coach in those four seasons? It’s impossible to say, but McCarthy’s team was never the same after that fateful day in Seattle.

Crossroads for Packers With Matt LaFleur

Fast forward to January 2026. The Packers are fresh off an embarrassing 31-27 loss at the hands of the Chicago Bears in a wild-card game at Soldier Field. They led 21-3 at halftime and 21-6 in the fourth quarter.

The defense gave up a whopping 25 points during the final period, and Matt LaFleur’s offense, which moved up and down the field throughout the first half, was only able to muster one scoring drive in the second half.

With LaFleur only having one year left on his contract, the Packers once again were at a crossroads moment. And, once again, they chose continuity by agreeing to a multiyear contract extension with LaFleur.

The extension, as reported by ESPN.com’s Rob Demovsky, is said to be a “real commitment” instead of a hedging of their bets that LaFleur would not be able to turn things around next season.

On the whole, LaFleur’s regular-season record is as decorated as any in professional football. His career record is 76-40-1 in seven seasons, with the first two reaching the NFC Championship Game. He’s a great offensive coach who has gotten the best out of Aaron Rodgers, Jordan Love and Malik Willis.

During LaFleur’s first three seasons, the Packers became the first team in NFL history with three consecutive seasons of 13-plus wins in the regular season. The turning point, however, came at the end of his third season in 2021, when the Packers lost a home playoff game against the 49ers.

Since that day, the Packers are 37-30-1. They’ve won one playoff game, a 48-32 drubbing of the Dallas Cowboys in Love’s first season as a starter. They’ve won more than nine games in a season just once. They’ve watched every other team in the NFC North hire a new coach and win the division since they last won one.

To top it all off, they have been the NFC’s seventh seed each of the last three years in the postseason.

Green Bay’s playoff streak likely would be applauded in another city, but LaFleur does not coach in another city.

He coaches in Green Bay.

The trophy that every team plays for is named after Green Bay’s most famous coach. This is Titletown USA. LaFleur’s goal is not to simply make the postseason. It is to win, and to win big.

Had the Packers chosen to go in a different direction, they would have had plenty of reasons to do so. LaFleur’s team finished the year on a five-game losing streak that included blowing three second-half leads, including the postseason loss against Chicago.

To his credit, LaFleur had several big-name players come to his defense in Monday’s locker room cleanout. Josh Jacobs, Xavier McKinney, Tucker Kraft and Micah Parsons all backed LaFleur as the right man to steer the ship moving into the future.

Competing for Championships

The other side of the coin is the results that everyone saw on the field.

LaFleur says all the time that the NFL is a results-based business. He’s right. Nobody remembers who loses, and winners get to write the history.

LaFleur and his team have yet to hold the pen.

The most common reason for keeping LaFleur, aside from his prowess as an offensive coach and play-caller, is the fact Green Bay this season simply had suffered too many injuries to compete for a championship.

That’d be fair. The season’s Super Bowl hopes circled the drain once Micah Parsons left a loss to the Broncos with a season-ending knee injury.

That injury, however, did not kill their hopes of winning a playoff game, something they have only done only once since 2020.

If losing Kraft and Parsons was a big deal, and it was, some of that loss was mitigated by the fact the Bears spotted the Packers an 18-point halftime lead and a 12-point advantage in the fourth quarter.

Kraft’s loss was lessened by the returns of receivers Christian Watson and Jayden Reed. Green Bay’s offense had more than enough weapons to score more than the six points it produced in the second half against what had been a bad Chicago defense for most of the season.

Had the Packers won that game, they would have faced the top-seeded Seahawks, whose starting quarterback was on the injury report before their blowout win over the 49ers in the divisional round.

Who knows what could have happened from there?

Instead, it was the worst loss in LaFleur’s tenure as coach, and another playoff failure in a laundry list that continues to grow during his time on the job.

Nonetheless, LaFleur received a contract extension. What that “real commitment” means remains to be seen, but the Packers are unlikely to move on from LaFleur anytime soon.

This is his ship to steer, for better or worse.

The wild-card loss was an inflection point. A chance to do something different. A chance to not let good be the enemy of great. The Packers chose what was comfortable in hopes that LaFleur will rediscover the magic his teams had in his first three seasons.

Time will tell if this situation turns out differently from the decision they faced with McCarthy more than 10 years ago.

History, however, is not on their side.

Unless, of course, championships are no longer the standard in Titletown.

Matt LaFleur will be on the sideline for the Packers again in 2026.

So, now what? Here's a look at some of the big-picture problems he must address. ⬇️https://t.co/OQ0j0iWfCJ
— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) January 18, 2026

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Crossroads for Packers With Matt LaFleur

Competing for Championships

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