Unable to Finish Off Bears, Matt LaFleur Should Be Finished With Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Writing that a coach should be fired is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. That’s the stuff of hyperbolic hosts and unhappy callers on sports-talk radio and of random writers hungry for some clicks.

It’s a subject we tiptoed up to the morning after the Green Bay Packers lost 10-7 to the Eagles, with Matt LaFleur – the head coach and offensive mastermind – looking overmatched for a second consecutive week. LaFleur, however, had earned the right to turn the season around.

He had done it before. And he did it again. After that game, Green Bay won four consecutive games and might have been on its way to a fifth at powerhouse Denver until Micah Parsons and Zach Tom suffered knee injuries that knocked them out of that game and, as it turns out, the rest of the season.

LaFleur doesn’t necessarily deserve to be fired for his team ending the season with a five-game losing streak. Lining up down the stretch without Parsons, Tom, Devonte Wyatt and Tucker Kraft would be too much to endure for most teams.

LaFleur does deserve to be fired – and, ultimately, should be fired – for how the team lost those five games.

The Packers led 23-14 in the third quarter at Denver. And lost by eight.

The Packers led 16-6 late in the fourth quarter at Chicago. And lost in overtime.

The Packers, their defense stomped into the ground against Baltimore, actually pulled within 27-24. And lost by 17.

On Saturday night, in an NFC wild-card showdown at the Chicago Bears, the Packers led 21-3 at halftime and scored a key insurance touchdown to lead 27-16 with 6:36 remaining. And lost.

LaFleur was shellshocked after the game. He said his team was “disheveled” and lost “composure.” Those are damning things to say about the team you’re supposed to be leading. It’s one thing to get punched in the face by a team with superior players. It’s quite another to simultaneously kick yourself in the shins.

With one year left on his contract and a new team president in Ed Policy, LaFleur has always known he was on, well, not thin ice but somewhat-tenuous ice. The ice has gotten thinner and thinner with each week.

Now, it would seem, there are cracks beneath the thin ice and the biting-cold water is seeping through. Will Policy throw out a lifeline or let the seventh-year coach sink into the abyss?

After the Bears’ epic comeback, Chicago coach Ben Johnson treated the Packers with complete and total disrespect in the locker room. “F*** the Packers! F*** them!” Sure, that’s a fired-up coach deservedly excited about what his team just accomplished against a longtime rival. But where has that fire been in Green Bay?

Green Bay Packers wide receiver Christian Watson reacts after the playoff loss to the Chicago Bears. | Dan Powers/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Really, Johnson has disrespected the Packers all along, from his introductory press conference in January to the Week 18 loss last week. Not only has he relished taking jabs at LaFleur, he got the last laugh.

In the span of 12 months, Johnson has taken the Bears from last place in the NFC North to the divisional round of the playoffs. The Bears had been the Packers’ punching bags for three decades. Not anymore. The pendulum has swung and his team looks like a rising power.

The Packers? They are spinning their wheels on a slippery hill.

Since winning a divisional-round playoff game in 2020, LaFleur’s team is 1-5 in its last six playoff games. The Packers had a chance to win all five of those losses but found a way to throw them into the manure pit.

A team that showed such promise in 2023, when first-year starting quarterback Jordan Love routed the Cowboys in the wild-card round before falling just short at the 49ers, was manhandled by the Eagles as the No. 7 seed last year and imploded against the Bears as the No. 7 seed on Saturday.

If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. The Packers certainly aren’t getting better. A team that started the season thinking about the Super Bowl went 7-8-1 in their final 16 games.

That’s losing the forest for the trees, though.

Great coaches have a killer instinct. Saturday’s game marked the fifth time this season the Packers failed to win a game they led by at least nine points. Johnson’s team, on the other hand, won for the seventh time this season in a game it trailed in the fourth quarter.

Talk about a killer instinct. In the playground game of sharks and minnows, it’s easy to determine who’s who.

Ultimately, after another late-game meltdown, how can the Packers run it back with LaFleur?

With the season falling apart before his very eyes, LaFleur had no answers. His team had a chance to potentially deliver the knockout punch with its first four possessions of the second half. All four ended in punts with one first down and 9 net yards.

By that point, momentum had turned. Rather than weathering the storm, his team was buried beneath an avalanche.

With the Packers nursing a 27-23 lead with about 3 minutes remaining in regulation, LaFleur called timeout before a critical third-and-10. It’s beyond belief that the Packers came out of the timeout and were flagged for delay of game.

“That’s inexcusable,” he said.

Less than a minute later, Chicago got a first down near midfield. The Packers substituted, had too many players on the field and burned another timeout.

“That stuff cannot happen,” he said.

But it did. Were either of those time-management issues LaFleur’s fault? Who knows on the first and definitely not on the second, but that’s beside the point. Crap runs downstream, as the saying (sort of) goes. The lack of timeouts doomed their ability to steal a victory.

So, another season has gone down the drain, the team’s streak of seasons without a Super Bowl reaching 15.

In a city called Titletown, Super Bowls should be the expectation. No, they need to be the expectation. Maybe complacency has set in, with an organizational belief that being good is good enough.

Matt LaFleur is a good coach. If Policy, following a short flight back from Chicago following a too-short playoff run, comes up with the logical conclusion that the coach who can’t finish off the Bears will be unable to finish off a season, a difficult decision will be the obvious decision.

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