The Art of ‘Just Good Enough’
What matters more, stability or achievement?
In the eighth year of the Matt LaFleur era, that’s the question that’s staring down Green Bay this season. During LaFleur’s tenure as head coach, Green Bay has consistently been a playoff team, but is that enough?
Though LaFleur has consistently brought playoff-caliber teams, they always seem to reach a plateau. From the MVP Aaron Rodgers’ team that couldn’t escape the 49ers to now the Jordan Love era, Green Bay can always win nine or more games, but can it translate that consistency into playoff games?
Now, following Green Bay’s embarrassing loss Thursday night to an Atlanta team that didn’t reach the end zone until Thursday, LaFleur is staring at the winning that has kept him for so long
A New Light To Titletown
Bringing in Matt LaFleur to Green Bay had the same effect as sunlight on a dark church window. Though Rodgers was great under McCarthy, by the end, McCarthy was more of a fly on the wall to Rodgers than a head coach.
With LaFleur, not only did he revitalize the team, but he also revitalized Rodgers—by bringing in a threat to his job in Jordan Love—into a dominant player once again. As head coach, Green Bay was able to open up the offense. Moving from a hero-ball offense reliant on Rodger’s excellence to a more balanced offense under the Kyle Shanahan school of pre-snap motions and constant movement of matchups. That change offensively turned an offense built on Rodgers heroics into a team amplified through Rodgers heroics.
In LaFleur’s four years with Rodgers, Green Bay was dominant, winning 13-plus games in three of those seasons. Despite all this dominance, the playoffs would tell something different. In the playoffs, Green Bay was quickly shown to be a team with unreliable receiving options once Davante Adams left and lacked a consistent defense to get the proper stops. The biggest throughline, though, of these losses was LaFleur’s lack of experience hurting the team at the biggest moments. One signature example was in a loss to Tampa, where LaFleur chose a 26-yard field goal try as the Packers were down 31-23 with 2:09 remaining in the game. The conversion closed the gap to five, but the Packers never saw the ball again as the Buccaneers won. LaFleur explained the choice by saying, “Either way, we have to stop Tom Brady and get a score".
Choices like this, while being a part of a collective inability to reach a second Super Bowl in the Rodgers era, showed an early sign of LaFleur’s clear weakness as a head coach. No matter how innovative LaFleur’s play calls could be, it doesn’t matter if he can’t manage the game as a whole. In the Rodgers era, LaFleur showed just how great an offensive mind he was, but also showed the same issues that leave Green Bay at the position they’re in now.
Darkness in Titletown
In the LaFleur era, while being a winning team for a portion of his tenure, when they lose, it’s not through the normal reasons. Massive game-winning throws to DJ Moore, Bijan Robinson, as of writing this, just found another 25-yard gap, and Carson Wentz throwback game are all different instances of how Green Bay has lost in their last four games. Losses like this show that there is a system-wide problem that causes such heartbreaking losses like this. What proves this further is that these instances are all in their last six games. While star player Micah Parsons was absent for all of those losses, at some point it’s more than just a lack of Parsons.
These losses, especially the two losses following the collapses against Chicago, showed LaFleur’s lack of growth as a head coach, and in their season opener against Minnesota showed an unwillingness to change it. In this era of finding the next McVay or Shanahan, teams have sacrificed the management of the game in favor of innovation on either side of the ball by the coach. Now, with teams looking for the next 29-year-old mastermind, it has ruined the ability of coaches to gain needed experience to lead a team to winning at the highest level. Coaches like McVay and Mike McDonald, who are seen as some of the best coaches in the league, have talked constantly about their early struggles with being able to manage the game as a whole. LaFleur has had that same problem, but unlike McDonald and McVay has never improved enough to make Green Bay’s losses at least normal.
Where Do Cheeseheads Go?
How long can winning last before the scars become too visible?
Though LaFleur is a winning coach, he’s not a winner when Green Bay has needed it most. In their playoff losses, all of them have been defined by one or two missteps that became too big to overcome; the issue is that the missteps have come more from sideline decisions than player decisions. Green Bay is good enough, but how long can that last? At some point, being good enough to be seen as a threat gets annoying when those results never come.
No matter how many wins are in LaFleur’s record, it’s empty where Green Bay has been wanting since he arrived: the postseason.