Alright, since we’re all just killing time and getting refreshed to get updates on what’s going to happen with Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur, I thought I’d open up the room to get people’s predictions on what’s going to happen with his future, now five days after the Packers’ brutal stranglehold on the Chicago Bears in the Wild Card round.
Name your league-wide insider (who usually gets the big news before the local beat, any local beat, at this point), and their story seems to be similar. Whether it’s ESPN’s Adam Schefter, The Athletic’s Dianna Russini or NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, they all believe the Packers are still working on a deal to make LaFleur their long-term head coach.
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Schefter has been insisting since before the playoffs that Green Bay wanted LaFleur to be its head coach going forward, but that money, not performance, was the reason for the lack of an extension heading into the 2025 season. Given how Packers-Bears ended, it was reasonable to believe the outcome could have been a potential catalyst for change. But at this point, it doesn’t seem like that’s how Ed Policy’s new president and CEO took it.
With John Harbaugh off the table, who also had his shortcomings in the playoffs, I’m not sure who fans would rank as their number one preferred candidate to replace LaFleur. Maybe it’s Mike Tomlin, but again, if playoff deficiencies are the issue, Tomlin hasn’t won a postseason game since the 2016 season.
By the way, when asked about LaFleur’s expected availability during the New York Giants’ pursuit of Harbaugh, Chris Mara, the team’s senior vice president of player personnel and brother of Giants principal owner John Mara, told a reporter (Ian O’Connor, who wrote the biographies of Bill Belichick and Aaron Rodgers): “I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you.”
To me, it seems obvious that the Packers want LaFleur back. Whether they can make the money work is another question. Hence the wait. Ultimately, if the real issue is money in this situation, I have to imagine LaFleur returning in 2026 (and beyond).
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But what do you think?
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