Matt Lafleur may have been one of the most interesting choices for a head coach this 2019 offseason. The Green Bay Packers clearly wanted somebody with an offensive background. Somebody who had worked with quarterbacks (for obvious reasons). Their goal was to update the offense and keep Aaron Rodgers happy. However, there were some red flags about this hire from the very beginning.
It started when team president Mark Murphy actually didn’t consult Rodgers on the hire at all. He merely called the two-time MVP after it happened and said, “Don’t be part of the problem.” A bold thing to say to a guy who has basically carried your franchise for the past few years. Things didn’t get much better from there. Next came an apparent divide between Lafleur and Rodgers on the issue of audibles.
Rodgers has made a career out of being able to assess at the line of scrimmage and change the play calls. It’s been a big strength of his game. However, the type of offense Lafleur runs doesn’t have such freedom. It requires 100% commitment from the QB to execute properly. When it happens, the offense has proven highly effective. Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco had career years in it under Kyle Shanahan and Gary Kubiak.
Now that training camp has begun, it seems the issues have begun spreading to the rest of the team. Lafleur expressed his frustration to the media about players apparently not being in shape and not giving the kind of effort needed to get the team back on track.
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Matt Lafleur sounds like he bit off more than he could chew
One of the problems raised about Lafleur was his relative inexperience. He’s only 39-years old. He’d been an offensive coordinator for just one year in Tennessee before getting the job to run one of the landmark franchises in the NFL. A franchise with a quarterback known for being a bit of a headache for his head coach and who is four years younger than the guy hired to tell him how to run an offense.
Mike McCarthy may have been somewhat outdated but he at least knew how to garner respect. He didn’t win a championship by accident. Lafleur is basically like a young mechanic with limited experience who was given a classic car that had a bad engine and told to fix it. Without replacing most of the parts in it. That is asking a lot. Too much perhaps. The guy certainly didn’t sound like somebody who was optimistic about the direction that team is headed.
