Packers Players Sound Off on Embattled Coach Matt LaFleur

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft has heard the uproar over the future of coach Matt LaFleur.

“I think a lot of that talk is pretty silly,” Kraft said on Monday.

As the players cleaned out their lockers for an earlier-than-desired offseason, the future of LaFleur, whose team has reached the playoffs in six of his seven seasons on the job but imploded in incredible fashion on Saturday night against the Bears, was a hot topic.

The players universally threw their support behind LaFleur. And while some of it could be a matter of staying in the good graces of the man who might be their coach next season, a few players clearly had LaFleur’s back.

“He’s still a good-ass coach,” safety Xavier McKinney said.

The Packers went one-and-done for their second consecutive postseason. Last year’s team dropped its final three games. This year’s team lost its final five.

Don’t put that on LaFleur, though, defensive end Micah Parsons said.

“At one point, the players, you talk about do your job, right?” he said. “You talk about Coach. This team put up what, how many points do they score? 27? 27 points in a playoff game. I always told you if my team puts up 21 points, we should win that game. We put up 27 points and we miss six, seven on special teams. That’s 34 points and you’re talking about you want to get rid of a coach?

“At one point, players have to have accountability, and that’s something that I’m challenging us as players that we need to have accountability. How do we let that game go? Coaching can only do so much. It’s about timeouts and Xs and Os, great. Sometimes it’s about playing football at the same time.”

As outside speculation about LaFleur’s future grew louder, Parsons said he reached out to him.

“Yeah, I believe so,” Parsons said when asked if LaFleur is capable of leading the team to the Super Bowl. “I’ve had my fair share of coaches and people around this league that I’ve been around, and Matt’s one of the best guys and people – like, as a person – I’ve been around since I’ve been in this league.

“I reached out to him when I started seeing this, and I said, ‘Man, when I agreed to come here, you were part of the reason why I came here. I want you a part of this and I love you and I think you’re a great coach,’ and he appreciated those words and we had a brief conversation.”

Receiver Jayden Reed and cornerback Keisean Nixon pointed to LaFleur’s success in getting the team to the playoffs as a reason why he should return.

McKinney, Parsons and tight end Tucker Kraft spoke as highly of LaFleur as a person as LaFleur as a coach.

“He’s a player’s coach,” McKinney said. “We all have really good relationships with him. I think we’ve all built that. Even from the time before I got here, I know everybody had a good relationship with him. And then once I got here, I know we got super-tight. I feel like he prepares us the right way. He comes in with the right mentality every single week. And he always has a good plan.

Green Bay Packers coach Matt Lafleur runs onto the field before their wild-card playoff game Saturday at the Chicago Bears. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“Sometimes it don’t work out perfectly or the way we always want it to work out. But I think, from a head coaching standpoint, from him to us, he puts us in a good spot to be able to go out there and be victorious every week. That’s all we could really ask for from a player standpoint. So, that’s why I feel like he should still be the head coach.”

While striking a similar chord, Kraft spoke confidently about LaFleur’s future.

“Matt’s been nothing but generous to me, my wife and my family since I’ve been here,” Kraft said. “Constant communication with ever since I’m a rookie. He’s just trying to get the best out of each and every one of his players. He comes in with the right mentality every single day to coach us up, to be the best version of ourselves for the best legacy team in the NFL.

“I don’t think there’s another coach who can come in and do it as well as he does it, especially with the complexities that are in this offense. You get players who get into Year 3 in this offensive tree, the offensive knowledge that we retain year after year, it’s only getting better here. I think Matt’s an outstanding head coach. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll remain here as a Packer.”

The personal side of LaFleur stuck out to Parsons, too.

“I think he’s a great guy and I just think he cares so much,” he said. “Like he cares so much about the players. I don’t think people realize that. And you can get spoiled with good coach and good people, and you don’t realize until they’re gone, and I don’t want to be at that point where we realize like, ‘Damn, we let such a great coach go.’”

During the final team meeting of the year, LaFleur made no mention of his future. Instead, he focused on the players.

“He just gave all the love and appreciation for us, all the work we put in, and just carry this with us going into the offseason,” receiver Jayden Reed said. “Put the work in, let it motivate us to do better, do whatever we need to do to not be in that position again.”

Receiver Christian Watson said LaFleur is “100 percent” a coach he wants to play for because of what he’s meant to him as a man and as a player.

“I think it’s easy to blame one guy when stuff doesn’t go the right way over a period of time,” he said. “But there’s a lot of people that make this thing go, so I think it’s hard to point fingers at one person. I think we all have some accountability that we have to take for our faults as a team, an organization, and we’ve got to have 100 percent of the people involved be locked in on that.

“I think that’s just the main thing, is getting everybody on board with that. I think he’s done a great job at trying to push people along that way. We’ve got to find a way to be better.”

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