This Unignorable History Shows Peril in Packers Keeping Matt LaFleur

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur is 76-40-1 in seven seasons on the job.

He’s 0-7 in terms of winning the Super Bowl.

History suggests it will be difficult for LaFleur, who was given a contract extension on Saturday, to scale the Lombardi Trophy mountain.

Josh Dubow of The Associated Press recently posted the history of Super Bowl-winning coaches. As he wrote, 32 Super Bowl-winning coaches were hired during the Super Bowl era. Of those, 28 won his first during their first five seasons, one during his sixth season and one during his seventh season.

LaFleur will be entering Year 8 in 2026. Only one coach had his breakthrough Super Bowl season in his eighth season. That was Hall of Famer John Madden. Only one coach had his first Super Bowl after Year 8. That was Bill Cowher in Year 14.

36 coaches have won the Super Bowl. Of the 32 that were hired after the start of the Super Bowl era, here's breakdown of what year on job they won their first title:
1st: 4
2nd: 8
3rd: 4
4th: 7
5th: 5
6th: 1
7th: 1
8th: 1
14th: 1

Of the 7 remaining coaches without a Super Bowl…
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) January 16, 2026

That speaks volumes about the bet the Packers – the team located in Titletown USA – are making with LaFleur. Simply put, if you don’t win a Super Bowl early in your career, you’re probably not going to win it at all.

Good But Not Great

That Super Bowl history is impossible to ignore. Then again, history is made to be broken. Andy Reid failed to win the Super Bowl in his first seven seasons but is now a three-time winner.

Reid is a great coach. So was Madden, who ranks second in NFL history in winning percentage (and first over the last 99 years).

LaFleur has not proven himself to be a great coach but he’s obviously a good coach. He’s led the team for seven seasons, and six of those ended in the playoffs. He’s 16th all-time in winning percentage, with nine Hall of Famers ahead of him on the list. He was part of the resurrection of Aaron Rodgers’ career. He was part of the rise of Jordan Love. He turned Malik Willis into a bona fide starter.

It’s undeniable that it takes some good fortune to win a Super Bowl. LaFleur hasn’t had much of it, which was probably part of Ed Policy’s calculus. In 2020, the Packers with Aaron Rodgers finally got to host an NFC Championship Game. Their opportunity came during COVID, so Lambeau Field was largely empty. Fans or no fans, they probably would have beaten the Buccaneers had David Bakhtiari not suffered a torn ACL at practice.

In 2025, the Packers had overcome Tucker Kraft’s torn ACL to take a four-game winning streak and 9-3-1 record into a showdown against the Broncos. The Packers were rolling until Micah Parsons suffered a torn ACL. Denver rallied to win.

It was a defining game for both teams. The Packers finished the season with a five-game losing streak, which included three blown leads – the most noteworthy, obviously, being last week’s wild-card loss at Chicago. The Broncos earned the No. 1 seed in the AFC and will host the conference championship on Sunday.

With the loss at Chicago, the Packers are 3-6 in the postseason under LaFleur. Starting with that loss to the Bucs in the NFC title game, they’re 1-5 in their last six games.

Matt LaFleur Looking Forward

What needs to change?

“I think you’re always trying to evaluate and making sure that you’re putting your players in position to make plays. And, ultimately, it’s going to come down to that,” LaFleur said a day after the game.

“And these games are tight, the margins are small and, when you have those opportunities, you’ve got to take advantage of them. And, unfortunately for us, you know, you always look and see when it gets tight, if a guy makes a mistake, why are we making a mistake? And so those are constantly at the forefront of our mind.”

With Green Bay coughing up a 21-6 lead in the fourth quarter, it squandered another opportunity. Without Kraft and Parsons, it almost certainly would have been Mission Impossible to win the Super Bowl this year. But the Packers were good enough to lead at Denver, they were good enough to lead at Chicago and they were good enough to lead at Chicago again.

They lost them all, leading to what LaFleur called a “kick in the gut” ending to the season.

A day after the season, LaFleur wouldn’t talk about his future. Rather, he had turned the page to trying to find answers.

Now, he can go full speed ahead into that search in hopes of being that rare coach to win his first Super Bowl deep into his tenure.

“I think you’ve got to use it as fuel. There’s no other way to [approach it],” he said. “First of all, you’ve got to acknowledge it and accept it for what it is and then try to find ways to learn from it. But I think, ultimately, you’ve got to use it for fuel.

“This one stings. And it should sting, and it should sting for a long time. When these guys are training away from the facility and there’s a moment where, ‘Oh, man, I don’t feel like doing this today,’ it’s like, ‘Hey, think about how you felt in that locker room.’ Maybe that can get you motivated to get up off your butt and do what you need to do to get a little bit better. That’s going to be the message to our guys, is you have to use it as fuel.”

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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Good But Not Great

Matt LaFleur Looking Forward

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