One Thing’s on Packers Coach Matt LaFleur’s Mind Entering 2026 Season

Because the Green Bay Packers couldn’t finish, they were finished quickly in last year’s playoffs.

When it was time for the Packers to finish strong, they fell apart at the seams.

The Packers took a 23-14 lead at Denver early in the third quarter but lost to the Broncos 34-26.

A week later, the Packers took a 16-6 lead at Chicago with 5 minutes to go but lost 22-16 in overtime.

In the playoff rematch against the Bears, the Packers led 21-6 entering the fourth quarter and answered Chicago’s comeback with a touchdown to lead 27-16 with 6 1/2 minutes remaining. They lost that game, too.

Had the Packers beaten the Broncos and Bears in Weeks 15 and 16, they might have won the NFC North as the No. 2 seed. That would have put them in position to have two playoff home games rather than entering the postseason with the dreaded seventh seed for a third consecutive year.

That’s a fact coach Matt LaFleur wants seared into his players’ minds.

“That’s been on the forefront of my mind,” LaFleur told reporters at the NFL owners meetings on Monday. “I think it definitely starts with the mentality, but it’s got to be in everything we do from as soon as we get on the grass. Whether it’s individual, there’s got to be a start and a finish to every drill.”

This will be an enormously important offseason for the Packers, who have new coordinators on defense and special teams and a fresh approach on offense. That groundwork laid in May and June must carry over into August and beyond.

“I think it’s got to be constantly on our mind because that is the one thing that we did not do last year,” LaFleur said. “We lost too many games late in the year when we had leads or just had opportunities to close people out and we didn’t get it done.”

The defense wasn’t the only problem but it was the biggest problem. The offense, for the most part, was fine, though it certainly fell short in key moments in the losses to the Bears, as well. Including playoffs, the Packers were seventh in points scored per game in the fourth quarter.

Jeff Hafley’s defense, however, was crushed, with only three teams giving up more points per game in the fourth quarter. The Packers allowed 8.8 points per game in the fourth quarter; in 2024, they were first with only 3.9 points allowed per game.

Limiting it to the regular season, the Packers last season gave up a total of 148 points in the first half but 133 in the fourth quarter.

There were big changes on defense this offseason. Hafley is the new head coach of the Dolphins, with LaFleur replacing him with former Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon.

Gannon will be installing a 3-4 defensive scheme, though LaFleur – as general manager Brian Gutekunst did at the Scouting Combine – downplayed the change from the 4-3 that Hafley employed the past two seasons.

The trade for Micah Parsons was supposed to elevate a good defense to a great one. He did his part during an All-Pro season, but the unit disintegrated without him after his torn ACL. The pass rush wasn’t good enough to cover for a suspect group of cornerbacks, and the cornerbacks weren’t good enough to overcome the lack of a pass rush. And Hafley, when push came to shove in those crushing losses to the Bears, had no answers for either problem.

While the big changes are on defense and on special teams, where there’s also a new coordinator with Cam Achord hired after Rich Bisaccia resigned, the offense won’t be immune to how LaFleur intends to attack the offseason once players hit the field for the first time in May.

The offensive coaching staff will return mostly intact. The one noteworthy change is at quarterbacks coach, with a familiar face, Luke Getsy, replacing new Eagles offensive coordinator Sean Mannion.

Here’s Matt LaFleur on why he kept his offensive staff largely the same.

“We gotta strip everything down and start like it’s Year 1 all over again.”

Full answer: pic.twitter.com/FwXqFqlkZU
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) March 30, 2026

“You always look at ways that you can improve,” LaFleur said of his reasoning to resist wholesale changes on that side of the ball, as well. “I thought the best way for us to move forward was we’ve got to strip everything down and start like it’s Year 1 all over again and really get to the detail of what we’re doing.”

In other words, there will be a fresh approach to introducing a familiar offense.

“I just think reinstalling and trying to go through – it might take a little bit more time – but really getting into the details,” he said. “That’s usually the separator.”

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