The Green Bay Packers opened their 2026 campaign with a surprising, flat-out embarrassing 39-22 loss to the Minnesota Vikings.
It was a game filled with a ton of familiar occurrences for the Packers. Blown leads, suspect offensive line play, and a lack of "finish" in the fourth quarter. All of it was on display for a team that desperately needed to prove otherwise after an awful end to the 2025 season.
Many are quick to point to things like the referees, offensive line play, and more as the main reasons for the loss. To be clear, all of those are certainly warranted. However, one man stands alone on top of it all and deserves a lion's share of the blame for the Packers continuing to play the way they do: Matt LaFleur.
Matt LaFleur's consistent issues keep weighing the Packers down
Before we continue, let me preface: I do believe Matt LaFleur is a good coach in the NFL. He has proven to be a great quarterback developer. He's a smart offensive mind and has won a lot.
With that being said, he's not a perfect coach and has a litany of drawbacks that, for whatever reason, he's been unable to fix, and which continue to weigh down the team year in and year out.
The issue of LaFleur's status on the team, as crazy as it is to say, despite his success, popped up last year. Without star edge rusher Micah Parsons, the team melted down, losing its last five games, including blowing two leads against the Chicago Bears in embarrassing fashion.
After a few weeks of chatter on whether or not the Packers would retain their head coach, they chose to do so in a big vote of confidence.
The team signed LaFleur to a multi-year contract extension in January. Throughout the offseason, LaFleur acknowledged he would need to strip down and rebuild his approach from scratch. Many hopeful fans saw this as a sign of changes coming to the team, especially with LaFleur and players both noting that the team needed to adopt a new identity. The need to finish games.
So far, that looks like it hasn't materialized in any way. Sunday's game against the Vikings looked like any Packers loss of LaFleur's tenure. The team played well for three quarters, completely melted down, and then lost in embarrassing fashion.
Like most of the Packers' bad losses, they were marred by a number of familiar issues that seem to be staples of LaFleur's coaching style. Specifically, his game management, in-game feel, and play-calling.
Throughout most of Sunday's game against the Vikings, the Packers' passing offense looked like a well-oiled machine. Jordan Love threw for 387 passing yards, Christian Watson had almost 150 receiving yards, and Love was reading Brian Flores' pressure perfectly en route to multiple big plays.
Instead of allowing Love to "cook," as he has jokingly said he would when asked in the offseason, LaFleur once again seemed to prefer slowing down the game at various points in favor of simply letting the high-paced offense run wild.
The Packers called several inexplicable run plays that totally stalled out a drive, including one on the very first play of a goal-line series.
It's here that we arrive at what I believe to be LaFleur's biggest issue as a coach. Instead of "running up the score" or electing to keep their foot on the gas, so to speak, LaFleur seems much more inclined to go up big and then begin doing whatever it takes to run out the clock on the opponent.
Matt LaFleur's teams have similar traits that never seem to improve
We saw this clearly on display in the third quarter. After getting the ball up 19-10, Green Bay seemed primed to go up the field, score, and be up by almost 20 on a team playing its backup quarterback. After a 43-yard pass to Jonnu Smith got the ball to the Vikings' 7-yard line, however, things shifted. The first play from the red zone was a miserable run attempt that resulted in a loss of a yard.
Two incompletions later, the Packers were kicking a field goal. Instead of optimizing the three chances, the team wasted an attempt and very quickly turned a chance to go up by 16 into a 12-point lead. The Vikings would return the subsequent kickoff 68 yards and score within three minutes, cutting the Packers' lead down to five almost immediately.
In theory, the Packers' style of play sounds good. Scoring a bunch early and then salting the game away has been a tried-and-true staple of NFL play for a long time. However, as the league modernizes and offenses get even better and better, it's simply not a tenable way to manage games, which is the huge issue with the Packers.
Too often, they completely waste drives by calling odd plays that derail the flow of a game, which, in turn, lets the opposing team get back into the game. It's become a joke of sorts amongst fans now that LaFleur loves calling runs on 2nd- and 3rd-and-long, and that popped up more than once in Week 1 and plenty of times last year in some of the team's biggest losses.
Ultimately, if you're not scoring at a high enough clip, you give the opponent a chance to come back. On top of that, if you're not extending drives, you risk absolutely tiring out your defense. The Packers do that often.
In 2026, a 10-to-13-point lead in the NFL is really nothing, but often seems to be the point at which the Packers enter "cruise control," for lack of a better term.
Other issues plague the Packers that are much more abstract. The team's inability to "finish" or "lock in" during the fourth quarter remains a huge problem. However, they are talented enough for these close games to never have been an issue in the first place. Unfortunately, when you're unable or unwilling to operate a fast-paced offense, games can quickly spiral and leads can disappear.
We've seen this plenty with LaFleur and the Packers over the last few years, and it seems like we'll just continue to see it for the time being.
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