With the 2025 NFL regular season officially coming to a close on Sunday, 14 teams are now set to vie for the Lombardi Trophy at Super Bowl 60, with one of those 14 being the Green Bay Packers, who earned the No. 7 seed in the NFC and will spend the Wild Card Round in the Windy City battling the second-seeded Chicago Bears.
Then, of course, you've got the 18 franchises that failed to make the playoffs. And of those 18, four have already fired their respective head coaches, as Raheem Morris (Atlanta Falcons), Pete Carroll (Las Vegas Raiders), Jonathan Gannon (Arizona Cardinals), and Kevin Stefanski (Cleveland Browns) have joined Brian Callahan (Tennessee Titans) and Brian Daboll in the unemployment line, with the latter two having been relived of duty during the season.
Now, there are some who believe Matt LaFleur, who has just one year remaining on his current contract, may end up being part of this group if the Packers don't fare well against the Bears on Saturday night.
Personally, that doesn't seem likely in the slightest, but if Green Bay team president Ed Policy does indeed make that decision, Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio believes Stefanski could end up with the Packers. And this was a scenario Florio suggested even before Stefanski was fired by the Browns on Monday.
Mike Florio thinks Kevin Stefanski could join the Packers if Matt LaFleur is fired
While we won't take you through the entire piece Florio wrote for PFT on Sunday, here's a quick look at a portion of the scenario he suggested:
"New team president Ed Policy, who grew up a Browns fan, made it clear in June 2024 that neither LaFleur nor Gutekunst would get contract extensions before the end of the 2025 season. And with both signed through 2026, Policy added that he's not a fan of lame-duck arrangements," Florio writes. "Which means it'll likely be new contracts or pink slips for the Packers coach and G.M. once the 2025 campaign ends."
"A loss could prompt Policy to explore his options. And Stefanski, who spent all of his career in the NFC North with the Vikings before getting the Cleveland job in 2020, could end up being the guy when the dust settles on what could be the first Green Bay coaching search since 2019."
Look, Stefanski is a solid coach, and it's unfortunate that he had to take the fall for all of Cleveland's problems the last two seasons. Let's get real here. Do you know how hard it is to win Coach of the Year not once but twice with the freaking Browns? And take that team to the playoffs twice? And win a postseason game?
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One has to wonder what that franchise would look like had the Deshaun Watson debacle not gone down, but what's done is done, and Stefanski, who's already reported to be in talks with the Giants, will undoubtedly land on his feet in the coming weeks.
But it won't be in Green Bay, as LaFleur isn't going anywhere no matter what happens in Chicago this weekend.
Sure, some of his early success can be attributed to Aaron Rodgers, who won two of his four NFL MVPs in LaFleur's first three seasons.
But since Rodgers' departure following the 2022 campaign, LaFleur has obviously aided in the development and Jordan Love and has led the Packers to the playoffs in three consecutive seasons. Sure, they've been the No. 7 seed each time.
But had Micah Parsons not gone down with a season-ending ACL injury in Week 15 against the Broncos and had Love not been concussed in Week 16 against the Bears, we could easily be sitting here talking about Green Bay being the NFC North champs and the No. 2 or No. 3 seed heading into this year's postseason.
Unless he gets lowballed once Policy inevitably makes his offer, LaFleur isn't going anywhere.