Deflated after Packers’ loss, Matt LaFleur dodges job talk

CHICAGO — Matt LaFleur could not have made it much clearer: He wants to remain the Green Bay Packers coach.

But after blowing an 18-point lead in Saturday night’s NFC wild-card playoff loss to the Chicago Bears, LaFleur declined to say whether he expected to return next season for an eighth year.

“With all due respect to your question, now’s not the time for that,” LaFleur said shortly after the Packers’ 31-27 loss. “I’m just hurting for these guys. I can only think about what just happened, and there will be time for that.”

LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst each have one more year left on their contracts. First-year team president Ed Policy said before this season that he would prefer not to have a coach or general manager go into a so-called lame-duck year.

That ramped up the pressure this season, which began with a 9-3-1 record only to see the Packers lose five straight games to end the season, although in one of those games — the regular-season finale — they rested most of their starters.

LaFleur has a 76-40-1 regular-season record and has led the Packers to the playoffs in six of his seven seasons, but Green Bay has not reached a Super Bowl during his tenure and has not been to a conference championship game since the 2020 season, the second of back-to-back appearances in LaFleur’s first two years.

Three times after Saturday’s loss, LaFleur was asked about his job security, and each time he said it wasn’t the time to discuss it.

However, he explained what the Packers’ job means to him.

“It means everything to me,” LaFleur said. “This is the greatest organization in the world, in my opinion. It’s very humbling. I’m certainly disappointed right now, disappointed mostly for — well, not mostly — I’m disappointed for everybody that’s associated with the Green Bay Packers. I’m disappointed for our locker room. I’m disappointed for our fans. I’m disappointed for our leadership, all our employees, everybody involved with the Green Bay Packers right now.”

A playoff loss like this could have long-term implications, and several players acknowledged that possibility.

“I’m not going to jump to any conclusions or anything,” Packers quarterback Jordan Love said. “We’ll see what happens going forward. That’s the case for every end of the season, and going into the offseason, that’s always the case. We’ll see if anything comes forward, if anything. So, we’ll see.”

Love threw his support behind the only head coach he has had in the NFL.

“I definitely think Matt should be the head coach,” Love said. “I’ve got a lot of love for Matt, and I think he does a good job. And that’s it.”

Second-year safety Evan Williams concurred.

“He’s our leader,” Williams said. “I’ll tell you that much. We have full faith in him, in all of his decisions. I can’t speak on any extension or anything that’s in his future. I know business is business, but he’s been my only head coach and really the only one that I see needing moving forward. Feel like he’s done a great job of putting us in positions to win and in scenarios like today, we’ve just got to find a way to finish.”

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Saturday’s loss was rife with mistakes and miscues. Love and the offense, of which LaFleur is the playcaller, managed only six points after scoring touchdowns on the first three drives of the game to take a 21-3 lead into halftime.

LaFleur said Love “played his ass off” but added that they “obviously didn’t do enough around him.”

It was the second time this season that the Packers blew a lead against the Bears. Their overtime loss at Soldier Field in Week 16 looked much the same as this one. That one cost the Packers the NFC North. This one cost them their season.

“We’ve just got to do a better job of keeping our composure as a football team and going out there and doing the fundamental things that we practice all the time,” LaFleur said. “I think when you get into these types of big games, when you don’t execute simple fundamentals, it comes back to bite you. That’s exactly what happened.”

Their skid to finish the season coincided with defensive end Micah Parsons’ season-ending knee injury. The Packers did not win a game after Parsons got hurt, and their defense suffered. Green Bay allowed just 19.0 points per game and 287.2 yards per game in its first 13 games. Those numbers spiked to 28.8 points per game and 402.6 yards per game in its last four.

The Packers gave up 25 points in the fourth quarter, only the third time in NFL history that a team has allowed that many in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.

“When you have a team on the ropes, it’s just finishing them,” Packers linebacker Isaiah McDuffie said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Special teams, which have cost the Packers in the postseason before, cost them again when kicker Brandon McManus missed an extra point attempt and a field goal try in the fourth quarter. McManus called it the “biggest disappointment in my career. Just an embarrassment of a performance.”

After last year’s playoff exit, Gutekunst said it was time the Packers got back to competing for championships, but after a second straight first-round loss, the Packers got no closer.

“It’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of work,” LaFleur said. “And we’re not where we want to be. I know we fought through a lot of adversity this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t do enough to overcome that adversity. That’s all of us collectively. We’ve got to do more. We’ve got to be better because it’s never an excuse. I know we lost some key players, but you’ve got to find a way to overcome that because I think we do have a lot of talent on our team. It’s just, it’s disappointing.”