There’s a lot of people that don’t want hear this — but Matt Lafleur is an average to a little below average NFL head coach.
I don’t personally dislike him. He just doesn’t have the mental makeup for the constant multitasking and on the spot decision making that the modern NFL requires with clock management, in-game adjustments, etc.
It’s not about a learning process. We’re in year 7. It’s just not a part of his skill set.
He’d make a fine OC again, a role where he can focus his planning and efforts on more limited specific details, and I would guess the later years of his career will probably be spent as a regular NFL offensive coordinator.
I would still push back to say that IMO LaFleur is still an above-average head coach on the whole. When I look across the league - just the 32 guys who are heading up teams right now for instance - I don't think there are 15+ guys I'd rather have. In fact, I think if we replaced him today there's probably just as much likelihood that you get worse as there is that you get better.
BUT, beyond that, I don't entirely disagree with the sentiment on the whole. I think LaFleur is a guy whose coaching skillset has a lot of great "bones," but that only gets you so far.
And if we were just a couple of years into LaFleur's tenure with us, the whole vibe would be totally different IMO. You'd look at those "bones" and expect as he grows and learns as a HC they'd start to gel together more.
But we're not just one, two, three years into it...we're into year seven now. And that's not to say coaches don't figure it out after that point (Andy Reid is probably the most prudent example at the moment), but I think those guys are probably more of the exception than the rule. And the question I would have to ask is...are we seeing much growth/development as a coach? I am not sure. It'd be one thing if Matt was clearly growing and developing as a coach with each progressing year. Again though, 6+ years in and I'm just not sure that's the case. Unfortunately it feels to me like many of the issues that have been present since early on in his tenure with GB remain present and have shown little signs of improvement and/or serious change.
I like Matt overall, too. And like I said, I think he's above-average on the whole. But I guess more and more my sentiment begins to feel like (and I would LOVE to eat crow on this one) we have perhaps already seen his "peak" with us. I suspect that so long as he is in charge of the Packers, we will have a good-to-very-good NFL team who will occasionally punch above their weight for an upset win and occasionally play down to their opponent to take a puzzling loss. But unfortunately I also have less and less confidence that he is going to be the guy to take us "over the hump," so to speak. I would love for that to be the case, but I am just not very confident right now.
I've harped on LaFleur's pressers before (I think they are often full of platitudes and cliches, saying very little in a lot of words, promises to change that never are fulfilled, etc) and last night was more or less a microcosm of that: We heard him come out and talk about how we made too many mistakes and didn't handle the situational football at the end right, didn't play with enough urgency, poor clock management, and so on. Which is all true, but....THIS IS YOUR TEAM, MATT!! And to some credit he does take the blame for these things...but we rarely actually see any change. I am so tired of hearing the same problems addressed in pressers without actually being addressed. If you say "
we didn't do XYZ correct" or whatever... then that's fine, but you need to actually hold the person(s) responsible for that to account...or take that accountability yourself. I'm sounding like a broken record here - if I've said it once It's been a thousand times - you're either coaching it or you're permitting it. Take your pick.
I also need to add that it seems like MLF makes his in-game decisions either based on completely irrational momentary panic, or a magic 8 ball. I am not sure which.
The drive right before half, we had no timeouts, missing starters on the line, backed up after the penalty. Every sensible person in the world knew we had everything to lose and nothing to gain on the drive, but Matty was pissed off about giving up the TD just prior, so instead of managing the game with his head, he let his emotions take over and ended up compounding the problem.
Contrast that with earlier when he wasn’t panicking and he got overly conservative, punting twice in Dallas territory on 4th and short.
Yeah, that's for sure part of it too. Sometimes it feels totally haphazard, I think I posted about it last night - feels like he's throwing darts blindfolded for his playcalling. Situationally, it's just all over the place. IMO, LaFleur is really great at game *planning*, and when it comes to his overall playbook and "system" design, he is as good as anyone. But to my eye he often does NOT adjust well at all. This results in one of two responses, both of which are problematic for their own reasons:
1. He may get too rigid and stuck on the gameplan/"script". There's times where our initial plan clearly isn't working and yet we keep pounding our heads against the wall looking for a breakthrough. It's like LaFleur says "I know I came up with a good plan and it's going to work eventually" and just insists on keeping at it.
2. Or, alternatively - as above - once forced off-script it's like he has no well-defined "plan B". He gets aggressive when he should be conservative and gets conservative when he should be aggressive. He tries to play it cute and slip in some random gimmick play that disrupts our whole flow. We'll go off-script and have some success and for some reason that pushes him to immediately go back "on-script" to what previously hadn't been working. And so on.
Idk, it's two bad losses (I know, a loss and a tie, but it felt like a loss lol) in a row and maybe I'm just jaded and not totally clear-headed but it's just endlessly frustrating to be stuck in this limbo of what feels like good-but-not-good-enough for the better part of a decade now. Maybe we're spoiled, it's better than most teams have it, but it's hard not to continually come away feeling like there's so much unrealized potential here.
