The Most Damning Word From Matt LaFleur After Packers’ Playoff Meltdown

CHICAGO – The Green Bay Packers had the Chicago Bears beat.

Until they beat themselves. Over and over. With an anvil.

The Packers lost to the Chicago Bears 31-27 in an NFC wild-card game on Saturday night. Three weeks ago, the Bears beat the Packers 22-16 in overtime. Chicago outscored Green Bay 16-0 in the final few minutes of regulation and overtime in Week 16. In the playoff rematch, Chicago outscored Green Bay 25-3 in the fourth quarter.

Coach Matt LaFleur said the team lost its composure.

Why?

“That’s a great question,” he said. “We’ve got to look at it. We’ve got to talk. There’s a lot of pieces. All you’re trying to do in the moment is, when mistakes are made, you’re correcting them. There’s not long discussions on the sideline. It’s just you correct the mistakes and try to keep it moving.

“And I felt like just our team got a little bit disheveled in the second half.”

Disheveled.

What a word. A damning word and a damning reflection on the team following yet another Packers playoff meltdown.

The offense, which punted on its first four possessions of the second half, got going too late.

The defense gave up 209 yards in the fourth quarter alone.

The special teams gave up punt returns of 37 and 22 yards in the final 16 minutes, and kicker Brandon McManus missed an extra point and a field goal in the final 7 minutes.

“We’ve just got to do a better job of keeping our composure as a football team and going out there and doing the fundamental things that we practice all the time,” LaFleur said. “I think when you get into these types of big games, when you don’t execute simple fundamentals, it comes back to bite you. That’s exactly what happened.”

Green Bay ended the season with a five-game losing streak. Since the start of the Vince Lombardi era, the Packer shave ended the season with a longer skid only once, in 1990.

Against Denver in Week 15, the Packers led 23-14 in the third quarter but lost 34-26, a 20-3 run.

Against Chicago in Week 16, the Packers led 16-6 in the fourth quarter but lost 22-16, a 16-0 run.

Against Baltimore in Week 17, the Packers pulled within 27-24 in the fourth quarter but lost 41-24, a 14-0 run.

What happened in Minnesota is irrelevant, but what happened in the playoffs was more of the same old swill. With a chance to rise to the occasion, the Packers wilted from the moment.

Good teams weather the storm. Mediocre teams get buried beneath it.

The playoffs are when coaches and quarterbacks build legacies. LaFleur ended the season ranked 16th in NFL history in winning percentage. Now, he’s 3-6 in the playoffs. Of the coaches ahead of him on the winning percentage list, only Washington’s George Allen has fared worse in the playoffs.

“I think that’s our job to find those answers,” LaFleur said of the back-to-back losses to Chicago. “I think there was some uncharacteristic things. We got bailed out at times, too, where we displayed poor ball security at times, put the ball on the carpet and it didn’t kill us in those situations. All in all, it was lack of execution from everybody.”

The problem for the Packers is those uncharacteristic issues have become quite characteristic.

That’s why LaFleur might be on the hot seat. It’s one thing to go 9-7-1 in the regular season and one-and-done in the playoffs. It’s quite another to do it how this year’s Packers did it. “Disheveled” play falls on the head coach.

Especially when the other team’s head coach, Chicago’s brash first-year leader Ben Johnson, had all the answers at the most important moments of the most important games of the season.

“As bad as I want to sit right here and say we should have won the game, we didn’t execute and that’s been a problem for us,” linebacker Quay Walker said. “Honestly, just finishing games, putting guys away. Even before I got here, I feel like this always been a part of this organization when it comes down to big games, like finishing games.

“When you start out [fast] in the first half, it come down to can you finish? Nobody care what you did in the first half. It just comes down to when the fourth quarter hits double zeros or whatever the case may be, do we have more points than them? And that hasn’t been the case at all.”

LaFleur wouldn’t touch any questions about his job security. New team President Ed Policy has said he doesn’t want to have a lame-duck coach. With LaFleur entering his final season under contract, that would signal either the Packers will fire LaFleur – or however they want to spin his departure – or he’ll get another contract.

If LaFleur is back, what’s it going to take to get over the hump? After leading the team to NFC Championship Games in 2019 and 2020, the Packers went one-and-done in 2021, 2024 and 2025 and won one game in 2023, meaning he’s 1-4 in his last four playoff appearances.

“It’s going to take a lot of work. A lot of work,” he said. “And we’re not where we want to be. I know we fought through a lot of adversity this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t do enough to overcome that adversity. That’s all of us collectively.

“We’ve got to do more. We’ve got to be better. Because it’s never an excuse. I know we lost some key players, but you’ve got to find a way to overcome that, because I think we do have a lot of talent on our team. It’s just disappointing.”

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