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Victory Monday Fact or Fiction: Matt LaFleur’s Packers Have Discipline Problem

The Green Bay Packers are on an absolutely outrageous pace for penalties through two games. 
Bill Huber|
Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur is shown during the game against the Jets.
Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur is shown during the game against the Jets. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – There’s no truth to the rumor that Matt LaFleur was flagged for a false start for unbuckling his seatbelt and standing too soon as the Green Bay Packers’ plane landed at Austin Straubel International Airport after Sunday’s win over the Jets.

There’s also no evidence that players were penalized for interfering with the beverage cart or for taunting the pilot.

All jokes aside, the Packers were fortunate to return home with a 20-17 victory over the Jets because they spent as much of the afternoon kicking themselves in the shins and stomping on their toes as they did blocking and tackling their opponents.

The Packers were penalized an appalling 14 times for 133 yards. The Jets, in a performance befitting a franchise that hasn’t finished with a winning record since 2015, went self-inflicted blow for blow with the Packers with 13 penalties for 156 yards.

It was a display of ineptitude not seen since a Bad News Bears scrimmage. The combined 292 penalty yards were the seventh-most in NFL history and the third-most this century, according to Stathead. Scott Novak and his crew of over-officious jerks will need a week of around-the-clock rehab after calling a total of 32 penalties, including infractions that were declined or offsetting.

Seriously, though, this was the type of bad football that a mediocre team can’t afford to play.

LaFleur deserves credit for figuring out a way to win a game it had no business winning. After blowing one lead after another during a six-game losing streak, if you’re going to ding LaFleur for fielding a mentally weak team, you have to sing his praises for pushing the right buttons for his team to overcome two horrendous injuries to start the game and a 17-7 deficit early in the fourth quarter.

Still, there’s the big, yellow elephant in the room.

The penalties.

Which begs this question …

Is Matt LaFleur Coaching an Undisciplined Team?

From the vantage point of two weeks, there’s no other conclusion to draw other than yes. Combined with last week’s one-sided penalty fest at Minnesota, the Packers have been penalized 26 times for 231 yards to start the season. That’s the worst opening stretch dating to at least 1940, according to Stathead.

In fact, the Packers had more than 20 penalties to start the season only once, 1947, when they had 22. The yardage total is the highest by a proverbial mile, with the 1951 team penalized for 192 yards. The previous worst start for a LaFleur team from a yardage perspective is the 130 yards in 2023.

Heck, the Packers’ worst marks for the first three games of a season are 29 penalties or 298 yards in 1948. At this rate, the Packers might blow past those numbers in the first quarter against Atlanta on Thursday.

It’s early, which means it’s a small sample size, but the Packers are on pace for 221 penalties for 1,964 yards.

The franchise records are 134 penalties for 1,103 yards by Forrest Gregg team in the strike-abbreviated 1987 season. Gregg’s teams were infamously undisciplined. LaFleur from a persona perspective is the polar opposite of the fiery Gregg. Shoot, LaFleur’s team in 2021 was guilty of 69 penalties all season.

The NFL record for penalties was set by the Oakland Raiders in 2011, when they finished with 163 penalties for 1,358 yards.

The Packers are on pace to beat those numbers by 58 penalties and 606 yards.

With the Monday night game to be played, they are first in all sorts of penalties, including roughing the passer and holding. They have lacked the discipline to do the small things, such as line up correctly and go on the proper snap count, and the big things, such as unnecessary roughness.

“We’ve got to take a look at it,” LaFleur said after the game. “Certainly the ones where, you know, Bull (Javon Bullard) gets caught for taunting when we’re off the grass. Anything directed towards a player from another team [will be a penalty]. Even though that was his former teammate, the officials don’t know what you’re saying.

“So, we’ve got to keep emphasizing celebrating with each other, and you can’t do anything like that because it puts us in a tough situation. But the ones that are just mind-blowing are the false starts, jumping offsides, lining up offsides. Those are the ones that’ll get you beat.”

There’s a difference between taking a look at something and actually doing something about it. That ball’s in LaFleur’s court.

The Packers are not a good team – at least not right now. Their margin for error is miniscule, a point driven home by needing overtime to beat the Jets, who haven’t reached the playoffs since 2010. Against the high-quality teams coming up on the schedule, starting with the Week 5 through 7 gauntlet of the Bears, Cowboys and Lions, there will be no place for this nonsense.

The Packers aren’t good enough to overcome 15 yards of lost field position on senseless penalties such as Chris McClellan’s for unnecessary roughness following a fourth-quarter punt. They aren’t good enough to overcome stupid things such as lining up incorrectly.

The defense has been really good but not so good that it can keep good offenses out of the end zone while giving up nine first downs via penalties, including on such rudimentary things as Karl Brooks jumping offside on third down on the opening series vs. New York or Lukas Van Ness giving the free-play touchdown at Minnesota in Week 1.

The Verdict

It’s early, and LaFleur’s history works in his favor. During his first four years on the job, the team averaged 85.5 penalties per season. The last three seasons, that’s crept up to 107. They ranked 18th in penalties in 2025, tied for 10th in 2024 and eighth in 2023.

However, the number of stupid penalties to start this season has been mind-blowing. Combined with the overall execution on offense and the rampant fumbles against the Jets, it’s been an ugly start for a team that’s typically avoided self-inflicted mistakes.

Is Matt LaFleur’s team undisciplined? No, but it’s quickly trending the wrong way.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.