My presence is not needed in Green Bay Packers Matt LaFleur open up in tears,I will leave Michigan wolverine needs me More…..
Mike Holmgren was Green Bay’s head coach for seven years. In that time, Holmgren never fired an assistant coach.
Mike McCarthy coached the Packers for 12 ¾ seasons before he was fired with four games left in the 2018 campaign. In McCarthy’s time, he fired five coordinators.
Matthew Patrick LaFleur has coached in Green Bay just five seasons. And in that time, LaFleur — who has the face of a choir boy — has already played the Grim Reaper repeatedly and fired four different coordinators.
LaFleur handed pink slips to defensive coordinators Mike Pettine and Joe Barry, and special teams coordinators Shawn Mennenga and Maurice Drayton.
LaFleur has done a lot of things right during his time as Green Bay’s head coach. Finding quality coordinators has not been a strength.
LaFleur is once again on the hunt for a defensive coordinator after canning Barry last week. And if the Packers — who reached the NFC divisional playoffs this season — hope to take the next step in 2024, the pressure is on LaFleur not to botch this hire.
“We’re coming. We’re coming with a purpose,” right guard Elgton Jenkins said of Green Bay’s future. “We want to win it all. Feel like we could have did it this year, but next year I’m very optimistic.
“We’ve got the guys in the building. We’ve got everything that we need to get it done. We’ve just got to go do it. We set a good foundation this year. We’ve just got to go win.”
For that to happen, LaFleur needs to hit a home run on his next defensive coordinator.
What should give Packer Nation nightmares, though, is LaFleur keeps striking out when hiring coordinators.
LaFleur retained Pettine from McCarthy’s final staff despite having no history with him whatsoever. And while the results were respectable, that partnership lasted just two seasons.
Green Bay’s defense ranked ninth in points allowed and 18th in total yards under Pettine in 2019. In 2020, the Packers finished ninth in total defense and 13th in points.
There seemed to be a disconnect between Pettine and LaFleur during the 2020 season, though. And the final straw came when the Packers had just one safety deep, and cornerback Kevin King allowed a 39-yard touchdown to Tampa Bay’s Scotty Miller in the final seconds of the first half of the NFC Championship Game.
The Buccaneers went on to a 31-26 win and won the Super Bowl two weeks later.
“Definitely not the right call for the situation,” LaFleur said after that game. “You can’t do stuff like that against a good football team and expect to win.
“That really was the big difference in the football game. You just can’t do that stuff. I blame us as coaches for putting our guys in that situation. That’s inexcusable. That should not have happened. So we’ve got to take a look at it, do some self-reflection and try to figure out ways on how that can’t happen again.”
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Just five days later, Pettine was out. LaFleur then interviewed nine candidates before settling on Barry — an old friend from his time with the Los Angeles Rams.
If anything, Green Bay’s defense regressed during Barry’s three years with the team.
The Packers finished 17th in total defense this year, and their average rank under Barry was 14th. Green Bay’s average ranking in scoring defense during the Barry-era was also 14th.
With the season on the line in the divisional playoffs against San Francisco, Barry’s defense wilted once again.
Green Bay held a 21-17 lead with just more than 5 minutes left and needed one stop to advance to the NFC Championship Game. Instead, San Francisco marched 69 yards in 12 plays and scored the go-ahead touchdown when Christian McCaffrey scored from 6 yards out.
The Packers’ last four first round picks — and 12 of their last 13 — have come on the defensive side of the ball. Green Bay had eight first round defensive players on the roster this year, and the organization believed that unit should have been elite.
It wasn’t — which led to Barry’s eventual dismissal.
LaFleur hasn’t been any better finding a special teams coordinator.
LaFleur gave Mennenga his first-ever head coordinator’s job in 2019, and Green Bay’s annual struggles in that area continued. With Mennenga in charge, the Packers ranked 26th in Rick Gosselin’s annual special teams rankings 2019 and 29th in 2020 causing LaFleur to make a change.
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Inexplicably, though, LaFleur promoted Drayton — who was Green Bay’s assistant special teams coach under Mennenga — to the job in 2021.
“I’ve had a chance to witness him for the last two years and I’ll tell you what, he’s a teacher,” LaFleur said after hiring Drayton. “He’s an excellent communicator. Again, brings great energy to that room, and that’s really what I thought was needed, is just his voice leading that room. I’ve got a lot of confidence in his ability. I think he’s going to do a tremendous job for us.”
Ahhh, not quite.
Green Bay’s special teams were downright incompetent during Drayton’s one year on the job. Not only did the Packers finish 32nd in the Gosselin rankings, they weren’t close to being 31st.
The Packers then hit rock bottom in the NFC divisional playoffs, when 49ers defensive lineman Jordan Willis blocked a punt and safety Talanoa Hufanga recovered and raced 7 yards to tie the game, 10-10, with 4 ½ minutes remaining.
“What a nightmare,” Larry McCarren, the longtime color commentator on the Packers’ radio network, screamed to his audience. “What a meltdown.”
The 49ers also blocked a 39-yard field goal attempt by Mason Crosby that day. And on the final play of the game — a 45-yard field goal from San Francisco’s Robbie Gould that gave the 49ers a 13-10 win — the Packers had just 10 men on the field.
“Yeah, that can’t happen,” LaFleur said. “It’s unacceptable. Again, that’s on me.”
Less than 12 months after promoting Drayton, LaFleur whacked him and went back to the drawing board.
LaFleur thought he’d finally found the answer to the Packers’ woes when he hired veteran coach Rich Bissacia to lead his special teams units.
Bissacia had been one of the NFL’s top special teams coordinators for two decades. And Packers made him the league’s highest special teams coordinator with an average salary of $2 million.
Amazingly, though, Green Bay’s gains have been minimal, at best.
The Packers showed signs of improvement on special teams in 2022 and jumped to 22nd in the Gosselin rankings. But Green Bay regressed this year and plummeted back to 29th in the Gosselin rankings.
With a shoddy track record at finding coordinators, LaFleur is back on the hunt for someone to save his defense. And the pressure is on.
“A lot is ahead, man,” wideout Romeo Doubs said at the end of the season. “It’s up to us to figure things out if I had to put it in my world. The hope is high for this team, and obviously going into this offseason the goal is to figure out what we can get better at.”
