The last nine quarters of Packers football has been some of the worst that the team has had in years. And after last night’s performance against the Falcons, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith believes that Packers head coach Matt LaFleur is on borrowed time.
On Friday’s edition of First Take, Smith and his former longtime debate partner Skip Bayless discussed the 35-14 blowout loss to the Falcons last night. Smith declared that the Packers’ season is effectively “over” and believes that head coach Matt LaFleur is likely out as head coach. He isn’t even sure LaFleur will make it to the midpoint of the season, let alone the end.
“I think it’s the end of Matt LaFleur. I think Matt LaFleur will be lucky to finish the first half of the season with the job as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers,” Smith said. “They looked like a soft team. They looked like a team that could be pushed around… They ended the season last year on a five-game losing streak…”
He then listed off a number of pieces of evidence that point to the Packers being primed for a bad season and LaFleur being responsible for the team’s struggles.
Poor Starting Packers
Things have been rough for the Packers ever since that blown lead against the Minnesota Vikings in Week 1.
After losing that game on the road they went to MetLife Stadium against a New York Jets team that everyone expected them to pummel. Instead, it was the Jets that did the pummeling for the first three quarters of the game and took a late rally plus some galaxy brained coaching by the Jets for the Packers to eke out the win in overtime. In doing so, they avoided their first 0-2 start in 20 years.
The Packers went into historic Lambeau Field expecting that a game against the 0-2 Atlanta Falcons would be their “get-right” game. Instead, Atlanta dominated them from basically the second quarter all the way to the end.
© Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images.
LaFleur has never lost more than nine games in a season and has led the Packers to the postseason in six of his first seven seasons at the helm.
But the Packers have just one playoff win since 2021 and have never quite reached the heights that they enjoyed during his first few years, when Aaron Rodgers was still playing at an MVP level.
If the Packers feel that LaFleur has run his course as head coach in Green Bay, Smith might be proven correct.
Green Bay will face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the road that will now in all likelihood make or break their season.
