If you’ve been following the Green Bay Packers since the 1990s, all you’ve known is great quarterback play.
Brett Favre took the reins in 1992. Aaron Rodgers took over for him in 2008. Jordan Love looks to be continuing the lineage with two good seasons after taking over for Rodgers.
The three quarterbacks have combined for seven MVP awards, three Super Bowl appearances and two championships.
Matt LaFleur was tasked with adding a second championship to Rodgers’ resume, while also getting Love ready to play when his time came.
LaFleur succeeded at one of those missions. Love has exceeded expectations, including a big second half of his debut season as a starter.
Despite the overall excellence of LaFleur in the regular season, it has not translated to postseason success.
LaFleur has coached in two conference championship games and earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs twice but flamed out at home on both occasions.
Overall, LaFleur’s playoff record is 3-5, including this year’s 22-10 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Wild Card round.
The disappointment from being one-and-done in the playoffs came on the heels of a year where expectations were high.
The year 2023 was a bit of a free roll in a city called Titletown. The Packers had no expectations, so they exceeded them.
Making the playoffs was simply good enough in 2023. Anything from there had the Packers playing with house money.
Beating the Dallas Cowboys and taking the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers to the brink of elimination changed the calculus.
The Packers were thinking Super Bowl just one year into a rebuild.
At times, the team looked like they were hitting their stride, but the story of the season can be told by three opponents – the Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles.
The Packers played each team twice and lost all six games to those two teams.
Ultimately, a team is going to need to beat good teams to get into the Super Bowl.
A troubling trend is growing in opposition of Coach LaFleur.
The ability to get his team to play their best football against the best teams has not been a trait he’s possessed.
In 2019, they fell behind against a vastly superior San Francisco 49ers team and were blown out.
They fell behind 28-10 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with a series of uncharacteristic mistakes and questionable coaching decisions.
The 2021 team did the same against the 49ers before a blocked punt ultimately sunk their season.
The Packers were not better than this year’s Eagles team that eliminated them in the postseason, but they were expected to be.
Instead, the final month of the season sealed the team’s fate.
Green Bay was trending downward as the season came to a close. That culminated with a loss to the Chicago Bears where LaFleur insisted the team was attempting to gain some momentum going into the postseason, only to make decisions that flew in the face of that mission.
Josh Jacobs hardly played. Kenny Clark was in and out of the lineup. Jordan Love started and injured his elbow.
It was a bizarre series of events. Ultimately, Chicago won on a walk-off field goal by Cairo Santos.
Once the season ended, Tucker Kraft essentially said that the team got what was coming to them, that they could feel their struggles brewing.
The question is why?
Why did a young team plateau and ultimately decline as the season went on? Why was LaFleur as conservative as he was throughout the season?
Aggression has been rewarded in this postseason. Andy Reid and Nick Sirianni are two of the more aggressive coaches in football, especially on fourth down. They’ll face off on Super Bowl on Sunday.
LaFleur was one of the most conservative in football this season.
Perhaps that controversial decision to kick a field goal trailing by eight against Tampa Bay in the 2020 NFC Championship Game will be his lasting legacy.
A good coach but not aggressive enough to find his way over the hump.
The 2025 season is a big year for LaFleur and the Packers.
In a city named Titletown, there are no more years without expectations. The Packers are expected to win.
Brian Gutekunst said himself it was time they started competing for championships.
That starts with the man in charge — LaFleur.
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