While I’ve been somewhat vocal about some gameclock and what I call field position mishaps, I also know that fundamentally MLF is a good Coach. He’s also a very good play caller. HOWEVER that does not imply he’s anything special in clock management or challenges or even deciphering real time in game mechanics. I think he’s actually shown some vulnerability on several recent occasions.
My guess is that Aaron Rodgers masked these inadequacies. Aaron could be his own OC, he’s just a special breed of mastering the art of modifying play calling and clock manipulation. They were match made in heaven because they masked each others weakness. It was mostly their Teams and Defense that was a roadblock to a Super Bowl. Had Rodgers played with our Defense from 2024-2025 regularly? I believe he’d have 1 SB and another SB visit at minimum.
Rodgers is long gone. Jordan is a good QB, but he also needs more supervision than Rodgers did when it comes to the proper usage of the clock and mitigating risk and that sort of thing. I wish someone else would handle decisions on team development because I don’t think it’s a strong suit. We are not getting the most from players and it wasn’t until Hafley enters that our Defense Roster was even being Coached properly.
I'm inclined to largely agree with that....
I guess ultimately one of the biggest issues I see with Matt... it's basically that the "end product" doesn't always seem to add up to the sum of the parts, if that makes sense. Matt has a lot of the
qualities that you would want in a coach. He has a lot of great coaching
traits. But it doesn't always seem to coalesce together to form a great head coach all-around, basically.
It often kinda ends up feeling like one of those "triple constraint" type problems (you often see it proposed as something like "Good, cheap, fast - you can pick two"). It's like Matt has a number of different things he does well...but you're never gonna get all of them done well at the same time.
In general, I think he is a good guy. He seems to have a pretty good team culture in place, and his players like/respect him...but then the trade-off is that his team also often seems undisciplined and unaccountable. And sometimes it is easier to like someone who never holds you accountable for your actions, ya know?
Theoretically/schematically/philosophically his offense is as good as any in the league. And IMO he is as strong as anyone at "scripting" his offense. If we get in favorable situations where the script works, it's unstoppable. But...in practice... he seems to get incredibly bogged-down by the actual in-game management of that offense. And when the initial script doesn't work he is often far too slow to adjust and/or just seems to make all the wrong adjustments.
Long story short, I probably said it 20 pages ago, but ultimately I feel like Matt is a guy is just more suited to being an OC than HC. As above I think he has a lot of good qualities, but is lacking some qualities that hold him back from being really elite. I think he has a strong enough system/philosophy/approach in place that he will always have a competitive team and will always be a good, average, flirting with great head coach (and there have definitely been times where I would say he HAS been great). But I also think he has the mind to be an ELITE, Hall of Fame type of coordinator if he stuck at OC instead of HC.
I dunno, I've kinda said it before (in a few different ways) but I think he's just kind of lacking that killer instinct.
He doesn't want to have to make hard choices.
He doesn't seem to approach much of anything with urgency.
He preaches accountability and discipline, but rarely seems to follow through on it.
In big games, it feels like he is getting out-coached more often than he is the one doing the out-coaching.
He doesn't know how to field a team that plays tough or physical (I remember a while back his own best buddy Robert Salah when he was with the Jets described their approach for facing us: "just keep giving them body blow after body blow, keep hitting them in the mouth...
we felt like if we kept taking them down to deep water, they'll find out they can't swim" and that's pretty much always been the case)
So, I don't know. At bare minimum he's going to have to figure out how to make the tough decision to stop missing on his coordinator hires AND to accept when it's time to move on and act decisively. Until he figures that out I don't think we are going to be able to reasonably expect much more out of his time here with GB. Ultimately a great leader is going to be defined by the people they surround themselves with and if you continue to surround yourself with guys who are underqualified, underperforming, etc then you're never going to see your full potential.
