Packers Insider Argues in Defense of Matt LaFleur’s Aggressive Nature

There's a narrative floating around the NFL or perhaps it's only floating around the corners of the internet where only fans of the Green Bay Packers reside.

That narrative is surrounding head coach Matt LaFleur and a perceived inability to get his team to put its foot down on an opponent. That certainly seemed to be the case in 2025.

This is the same coach who made the motto of the 2020 team "All gas, no brakes". Perhaps not surprisingly, that team made it to the NFC Championship game. In fact, so did LaFleur's 2019 team.

The huge caveat here is that four-time league MVP Aaron Rodgers was LaFleur's quarterback then. He's one of the greatest of all-time to do it, so LaFleur certainly had a bit of a leg up in his early seasons as the head coach in Green Bay.

That's not a diss against Jordan Love, either. It's just simply unrealistic to expect any quarterback to live up to the back-to-back gauntlet of Brett Favre followed by Rodgers.

And yet, the Packers have had the look of a contender at times during the Love era. They certainly were expected to be one when they traded two first-round picks and defensive stalwart Kenny Clark for superstar pass-rusher Micah Parsons last offseason.

A lot played into it, and that's especially true in the case of injuries. The Packers' 2025 season was a major dissapointment, though, however it shook out. They finished 9-7-1 and lost to the Chicago Bears in the Wild Card round. Even worse than the record was the way it happened. Before Parsons got injured in Week 15, the Packers were 9-3-1 and fighting for the top of the NFC North.

They ended the season on a five game losing skid, which included two losses to the Bears.

It was a collapse, without a doubt, and fans have been quick to point out that there were multiple games at the end there in which the Packers blew a lead. They were up 23-14 in the third quarter against the Denver Broncos and lost that game. They were up 16-6 in the fourth quarter against the Bears on December 20 but lost, 22-16, in overtime.

In the Wild Card game against the Bears, the Packers got out to a roaring 21-3 lead and held that into halftime. Heck, they even went into the fourth quarter up 27-16. They ended up losing that one, 31-27.

There's a trend there. A concerning one. Yet, it's worth noting that team insider Mike Spofford doesn't think this has to do with LaFleur taking his foot off the gas as an offensive coordinator.

He was asked in a mailbag about England's recent loss to Argentina in the World Cup in which England lost a 1-0 lead in the 85th minute. Could a coach like LaFleur use that collapse to "self-scout" his own tendencies?

Spofford wasn't having it.

"You took the risk, so someone needs to explain to me when LaFleur supposedly sat on a lead last year and cost the Packers a game. It's not there," Spofford responded.

The team insider pointed out that there were plenty of bad moments in Green Bay's losses last season, but it didn't have to do with LaFleur getting conservative.

"Go look at the film," he wrote. "They didn't curl up into a shell, like England did. They were calling plays to go score and simply failed"

Spofford didn't let LaFleur off the hook, and there's certainly a lot to criticize. After all, a team typically takes on the personality of its head coach, and there's no doubting the fact that the Packers collapsed last season when the going got tough. 

They, and specifically LaFleur, didn't get conservative, though.

"This narrative floating around out there that the late-game failures last year were due to him [LaFleur] sitting on leads and trying to "hang on" to not lose is just false," Spofford said. "The facts don't support it. Any comparison to what the England coach did against Argentina is off-the-rocker misguided."

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