Matt LaFleur has won a lot of regular season games for the Green Bay Packers during his seven-year career, but he's just 1-5 in his last six playoff games. He's only got one year left on his contract, so should the Packers give him a long-term extension, or cut bait now and find someone new?
GREEN BAY, Wis. — There are certain NFL cities where regular season success year after year is enough for a coach to be beloved. But there are also NFL cities where the regular season doesn't mean anything, and that postseason success is all that matters.
Green Bay and the great state of Wisconsin is one of those places. They don't call it Titletown USA for nothing.
But here in mid-January, the Packers are at a crossroad. Matt LaFluer, who is 76-40-1 in his seven seasons in Green Bay, has won more games that anyone besides Andy Reid in Kansas City and Sean McDermott in Buffalo.
LaFleur is No. 3, out of 32 teams. That's pretty darn good.
But what's downright awful is that LaFleur has lost five of his last six playoff games. He's never won a Super Bowl, and has never even played in one.
That's not good enough in Green Bay.
But this is an interesting time because LaFleur only has one year left on his contract with the Packers. You don't want him coaching as a lame duck next season, so right now the Packers have to make a choice. Do they want to commit to another four or five years with LaFleur? Or do they cut bait now and move on?
There is a sizable portion of the Packers fan base that will go nuts if LaFleur gets a huge extension. These postseason losses have been tough to swallow, especially the Saturday night loss where they blew an 18-point lead to the Chicago Bears — their hated archrivals — in a 31-27 loss that knocked them out of the playoffs.
LaFleur reiterated his desire to remain as the Packers' coach, but also said the time wasn't right to address his future in great detail.
"With all due respect to your question, now is not the time for that. I'm just hurting for these guys. I can only think about what just happened. There will be time for that.
"(Coaching the Packers) means everything to me. This is the greatest organization in the world, in my opinion. It's very humbling. And I'm disappointed for everybody that's associated with the Green Bay Packers. I'm disappointed for our locker room, our fans, our leadership, all our employees, everybody involved with the Packers."
A quarter of the league's franchises have coaching vacancies right now — and many would love to have someone like LaFleur on their sidelines. Here are the jobs that are currently open:
Atlanta Falcons
Arizona Cardinals
Baltimore Ravens
Cleveland Browns
Las Vegas Raiders
Miami Dolphins
New York Giants
Tennessee Titans
The biggest adjacent question too is that if the Packers move on from LaFleur, who would they go after that would be better?
That's in the eye or the beholder, of course. Packers fans simply hate the idea that the Bears are the better team now, having won the NFC North and beating the Packers twice in the past month. They have owned this rivalry for 30 years — thank you, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers — and they hate the idea that the rivalry has switched on LaFleur's watch.
Blowing that lead to the Bears was a crusher.
"This one is going to hurt for a really, really long time,'' LaFleur said. "When you're in complete control of a football game and script gets flipped in the second half, it really hurt. It was a lot of self-inflicted things. Give credit to them, we knew they were a team that could come back and fight, they proved it all season long.
"We had opportunities to put them away and didn't get it done. We have to do a better job of keeping our composure. When you get in big games, when you don't execute simple fundamentals, it comes back to bite you. And that's exactly what happened."
Here's LaFleur's postseason history.
2025 season: Lost to Chicago Bears 31-27 in wild-card round on Saturday night. Had a 9-7-1 regular season record.
2024 season: Lost to Philadelphia Eagles 22-10 in the wild-card round. Had an 11-6 regular season record.
2023 season: Beat Dallas Cowboys 48-22 in wild-card round, lost to San Francisco 49ers in divisional round. Had a 13-3 regular season record. Had a 9-8 regular season record.
2022 season: Failed to make the playoffs. Had an 8-9 regular season record.
2021 season: Lost to San Francisco 49ers 13-10 in divisional round. Had a 13-4 regular season record.
2020 season: Beat Los Angeles Rams 32-18 in divisional round, lost to Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31-26 in conference championship game. Had a 13-3 regular season record.
2019 season: Beat Seattle Seahawks 28-23 in divisional round, lost to San Francisco 49ers 37-20 in conference championship game. Had a 13-3 regular season record.
There are a lot of NFL owners that would do anything in their power to re-sign a coach with that much success. But do the heartbreaking playoff losses outweigh all those regular season wins?
That's what the Packers hierarchy has to decide right now. Are they willing to double down on LaFleur?
That might be a hard sell to an impatient fan base that's only won one Super Bowl in the past 30 years. They certainly want more than one in the next 30.
"It's going to take a lot of work because we're not where we want to be,'' LaFleur said. "I know we fought through a lot of adversity this year but unfortunately, we did not do enough to overcome that adversity. That's all of us, collectively.
"We have to do more, we have to be better. It's never an excuse. I know we lost some key players but you have to find a way to overcome that. I think we have a lot of talent on our team, it's just disappointing.''