Nathan James 🧀

Here is my stance on Matt LaFleur: He was hired in 2019 on a 4 year contract. In his first 3 seasons his teams won 13 games every year, reaching the NFC Conference Championship twice and earning three 1st round playoff byes. He was rewarded with a 4 year contract extension in 2022. On his second contract his teams won 54% of regular season games. Missed the playoffs one year, was the 7th playoff seed three straight seasons with one total playoff victory. This is a major decline. 2025 specifically showcased several epic collapses which unfortunately became expected as falling apart late became baked into the team identity. I fully thought it was time to move on from Matt LaFleur after the 2025 season. The team performance since the first extension was not good enough. I did not need to answer “who would you hire instead?” to know I didn’t think he was the right guy to lead this team. It’s ok to dump somebody you like if you fell they are not “the one” for you long term without knowing who you will date next on your search for “the one”. The Packers instead pointed at his entire Packers resume, highlighting his early success, in their decision to extend him a second time. To me this the main issue. His early success earned him his first extension - rightfully so. But the measuring stick, in my mind, should be the performance during the extension years. His initial years already “did their job” and should be background consideration instead of once again being the focal argument for extension. Now, when Matt LaFleur was hired only 6 teams per conference made the playoffs each season. On this same standard the Packers would have missed the playoffs in each of his seasons on his second contract. Some don’t like this 6 vs 7 teams comparison. Ok, fine. For me, if you want to look backwards to his early resume success as a measuring stick, then we should apply the same measuring stick to his teams’ recent performance - which would have been 4 straight non-playoff worthy performances every year of the extension period, apples to apples. If you don’t want this comparison, then let’s focus entirely on the second contract performance - which again led to 1 total post season win in 4 years - and set aside the early resume. So to me, using either thought process, it just wasn’t good enough and I didn’t see any reason to expect improvement given the cultural collapses on the field which seem baked deep into the Packers DNA. The Packers, however, decided to reward Matt LaFleur to a second contract extension with an uncertain number of more years, making an uncertain, yet significantly higher, amount more fully guaranteed money. So far, nothing I have seen this 2026 has suggested the Packers made the correct decision to re-invest into Matt LaFleur.