Matt LaFleur admits Packers' special teams issues could affect play-calling

After a relatively uneventful preseason, the Packers may be having the roughest week of any team in the NFL. A day after the team put running back AJ Dillon on IR with a season-ending neck injury, they announced that kicker Greg Joseph – who just this week was named to the team's first official 53-man roster – was cut.

In his place, the team signed former Titans kicker Brayden Narveson. When asked about the decision to switch kickers so quickly after the roster was announced, head coach Matt LaFleur gave some, uh, interesting quotes about the state of the Packers' special teams.

The Packers' kicking situation is already getting weird and the season hasn't even started yet

Ultimately, moving on from Joseph isn't the end of the world – last season, while kicking for the Vikings, he went 24-30 (80%) and just 7-13 from 40 yards or longer. That was actually an improvement from the year before, when he hit 78% of his kicks and missed six of his 10 attempts from 50+ yards. He's never been particularly accurate; his field goal percentage in 2023 ranked 28th out of 33 qualified kickers. Like LaFleur mentioned, that's not going to fly in a place that challenges kickers as much as Green Bay does.

Still, the idea of the Packers being more aggressive on 4th down because they don't trust their kicker isn't the worst silver lining. There's a real argument to be made that the vast majority of NFL coaches are far too conservative, especially on the opposing team's side of the field. Fellow NFC North head coach Dan Campbell's the poster boy for being aggressive on 4th down, and while it'll inevitably lead to a couple headline-making moments per season, the numbers say that being aggressive on 4th down pays off in the long run.

So in a way, maybe it's ... good? ... to have an unreliable kicker? I don't know. This is what not having a trustworthy kicker does to a person. This blog is going to age so poorly when Greg Joseph's back on the Vikings.