CHICAGO — Matt LaFleur couldn’t have made it clearer: He wants to remain the Green Bay Packers’ coach.
But after taking an 18-point lead in Saturday night’s NFC playoff loss to the Chicago Bears, LaFleur declined to say whether he expects to return next season for an eighth year.
“With all respect to your question, now is not the time,” LaFleur said shortly after the Packers’ 31-27 loss. “I’m hurting for these people. I can’t help but think about what just happened, and there will be time for that.”
Both LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst have another year remaining on their contracts. First-year team president Ed Pulisi said before this season that he would prefer not to have a coach or general manager go through a so-called lame duck year.
That has added to the pressure this season, which began with a 9-3-1 record only to see the Packers lose five straight games to end the season, although in one of those games — the regular-season finale — they rested most of their players.
LaFleur has a 76-40-1 regular-season record and led the Packers to the playoffs in six of his seven seasons, but Green Bay has not reached the Super Bowl during his tenure and has not been to the conference championship game since the 2020 season, the second straight appearance in LaFleur’s first two years.
After Saturday’s three losses, LaFleur was asked about his job security, and each time he said it wasn’t the time to discuss it.
However, he made it clear what the Packers job means to him.
“It means everything to me,” LaFleur said. “This is the greatest organization in the world, in my opinion. It’s very humbling. I’m definitely disappointed right now, mostly disappointed – well, not mostly – I’m disappointed for everyone associated with the Green Bay Packers. I’m disappointed for our locker room. I’m disappointed for our fans. I’m disappointed for our leadership, all of our staff, and everyone involved with the Green Bay Packers right now.”
A playoff loss like this could have long-term effects, and several players have acknowledged that possibility.
“I’m not going to jump to any conclusions or anything,” Packers quarterback Jordan Love said. “We’ll see what happens in the future. That’s the way it is at the end of every season, and going into the offseason, that’s always the case. We’ll see if anything comes up, if anything happens. So, we’ll see.”
Love threw his support behind the only coach he had in the NFL.
“I definitely think Matt should be the head coach,” Love said. “I have a lot of love for Matt, and I think he’s doing a good job. That’s all.”
Sophomore safety Evan Williams agreed.
“He’s our leader,” Williams said. “I’ll tell you that much. We have complete confidence in him, in all of his decisions. I can’t speak to any extension or anything regarding his future. I know business is business, but he’s been my one and only head coach really that I see that he needs to move forward. I feel like he’s done a great job of putting us in positions to win and in scenarios like today, we just have to find a way to finish.”
Saturday’s loss was full of mistakes and misses. Love and the offense, which has LaFleur as its play-caller, managed just six points after scoring touchdowns on the first three drives of the game to take a 21-3 lead into halftime.
LaFleur said Love “played his ass off” but added that they “clearly didn’t do enough around him.”
It was the second time this season the Packers blew a lead against the Bears. Their overtime loss at Soldier Field in Week 16 looked a lot like this one. This cost the Packers the NFC North. This cost them their season.
“We just have to do a better job of keeping our composure as a football team and going out there and doing the basic things that we do all the time,” LaFleur said. “I think when you get into these kind of big games, when you don’t execute simple fundamentals, it hurts you. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Their slide to finish the season coincided with a season-ending knee injury to defensive end Micah Parsons. The Packers didn’t win a game after Parsons was injured and their defense struggled. Green Bay has allowed just 19.0 points per game and 287.2 yards per game in its first 13 games. Those numbers have risen to 28.8 points per game and 402.6 yards per game in the last four games.
The Packers gave up 25 points in the fourth quarter, marking only the third time in NFL history that a team has allowed that many points in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.
“When you have a team on the ropes, it’s a team that just finished,” Packers linebacker Isaiah McDuffie said. “It’s that simple.”
Special teams, which have cost the Packers in the postseason before, cost them again when kicker Brandon McManus missed an extra point attempt and a field goal attempt in the fourth quarter. McManus described it as “the biggest disappointment of my career. Just an embarrassment of the performance.”
After falling out of the playoffs last year, Gutekunst said it was time for the Packers to get back into championship contention, but after a second straight loss in the first round, the Packers are no closer.
“It’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of work,” LaFleur said. “We’re not where we want to be. I know we struggled through a lot of adversity this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t do enough to overcome that adversity. That’s all of us collectively. We have to do more. We have to be better because it’s never an excuse. I know we lost some key players, but you have to find a way to overcome that because I think we have a lot of talent on our team. It’s just, it’s disappointing.”