Q&A: Packers Coach Matt LaFleur Reflects on 100th Game

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur will coach the 100th regular-season game of his career on Sunday against the Bears. He reflected on his first six seasons in this exclusive interview.

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur celebrates during the closing moments of last year's victory over the Bears at Lambeau Field. / Mark Hoffman / USA TODAY NETWORK

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur will coach his 100th regular-season game against the Chicago Bears on Sunday, the same opponent as when he made his debut as one of eight new head coaches in 2019.

With a 67-32 record in the regular season, LaFleur is 12th in NFL history in winning percentage (.677), with six Hall of Famers ahead of him. If he can extend his record to 12-0 against the Bears, LaFleur would tie Mike Holmgren for the second-most regular-season wins by a coach in his first 100 games in the last 40 seasons. (George Seifert won 78).

For the fifth time, he’s got the Packers into the playoffs.

That’s a lot of winning, though the “ultimate” prize has eluded him.

After practice on Thursday, LaFleur took 10 minutes to reflect on the last six years. Here is a lightly edited transcript from our conversation.

So, this is obviously No. 100 for you?

I didn’t even know that.

Really?

No.

I assume Jason Wahlers [the team’s vice president of communications] told you.

Yeah, he just told me. That’s crazy.

It is crazy, right? What does that number mean to you? There’s a lot of good coaches in this league who don’t get to 100 because they get fired.

I’d say it makes me appreciate this opportunity. Certainly, having come in here, I knew we had a good roster. Anytime you come to a team that has guys like Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams and David Bakhtiari, Kenny Clark – a lot of good players – I think we’ve done a decent job still hunting the ultimate.

You come here to win Super Bowls. You want to win a Super Bowl. But I just think it’s a credit to everybody in this place, from Mark (Murphy) and Gutey (Brian Gutekunst) and Russ (Ball) to everybody – our coaching staff and the players. Because it ain’t easy to win in this league. But we have good people here.

Your first game, obviously, was at Chicago. Do you remember what you were thinking before kickoff?

Yeah, I remember the national anthem more than anything. Just that guy [singing the anthem]. It was just chaotic. I remember in that game thinking, what the hell are we doing? We didn’t execute very well offensively but our defense was balling. We just got Z (Za’Darius Smith) and Preston (Smith), and I think our defense had a bunch of sacks in that game. We won the game 10-3. It was chaos.

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur is shown before his first career game at the Chicago Bears in 2019. / Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal S, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via Imagn Content Services, LLC

I remember Mike McCarthy said this a bunch of times. He lost his first couple games [including 26-0 against the Bears in his first game] so it’s totally different, but he was out there thinking, ‘Am I ever going to win a game?’ Obviously, it was different for you because you won your first game and won a whole bunch of games, but did you ever have doubts? Ever?

Yeah, I think doubt’s a real thing. But I think what I go back to all the time is If I ever feel like doubt’s setting in, it’s just like, “Did you do everything you could in your power to prepare the best way you could?” And when the answer is yes, you’re like, “All right, we can just go play. I can just go call a game.”

You know what I mean? There’s nothing more. There’s going to be things that happen that are out of your control. And you kind of got to roll with it. But I think it always comes down to your process and making sure that you feel like you’re doing everything in your power to get your team ready to play and making sure that you put the time and effort and energy into it.

And that’s one thing that I’ve always felt pretty confident in with us as a staff is that I know our guys are working, and then it’s on us to transfer what we know and implement the game plan. Then our guys got to go out and play. All we can do is coach them throughout the course of the week. Sundays are their day. You’ve got to let them go play.

You mentioned the Super Bowl a minute ago. Look, if the Bears are 11-5, they’re going to be throwing a parade, right? Here, you’re 11-5 but you lost last week and a lot of the fans are like, “Whatever.” Do you feel the pressure to get that ultimate prize? Because 11-5 to some people is ...

Yeah, but it’s not from them. I feel it more internally, just making sure you’re doing everything you can. It’s hard. It’s hard enough to win in this league. Once you get to the dance, it’s like March Madness. I mean, anything can happen.

And, unfortunately, we’ve been on the wrong side of it. Probably our two best years, ’20 and ’21, those were really, really disappointing moments when you felt like you had a real chance at it. And I think even last year, after we went to Dallas and did what we did, and, man, I just thought we were playing our best, and I thought our team had a looseness about it and there was no expectation.

I think that’s one thing you always got to try to block out the best you can is that external noise, so you can go out and play free and play your best. I think we’ve got a bunch of guys that we put enough pressure on ourselves. You can’t put the pressure on from the outside world, in my opinion. You’ve got to trust you and know that you’re doing everything in your power. You usually know if you put everything into it or not, right?

And I know, speaking for myself, I don’t feel like I’ve prepared in a different way for any game in my time here. So, it’s always about being your best. Sometimes it’s going to work out and sometimes it’s not. It speaks to just how competitive our game is.

You mentioned how hard you work at it. Do you ever give yourself time to take a step back and think, “Damn.”

Not really. I think there’s time for that. Especially when you’re in the moment, you just try to stay in the moment and focus on what you’ve got to do to try to get your guys to go and play their best. In the offseason, yeah, you can kind of reflect a little bit and think about it, but I try to just focus on what needs to be done.

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur celebrates while walking off the field following the victory against the New Orleans Saints. / Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Coming back to how you started, is there a sense of pride in that you’ve gone through Rodgers and Dave and Davante to this whole other generation of players and, here you are, you’re back in the playoffs with a real shot at things. It’s like nothing’s changed in that regard.

It’s such a credit to everybody. It’s a credit to Gutey and his staff because, let’s be honest: I definitely think coaching matters – I definitely believe that – but you better have talent to work with. I think our guys have done a really good job of finding talent, and then it’s on us to try to maximize that talent.

I know you hate stats but you’re 12th all-time in winning percentage.

OK.

Does that stuff matter at all?

No. Not right now. Not for me. I just want to win this week. I just want to beat the Bears and then we’ll tackle whatever’s next. That will matter someday probably to me but not right now. I just want to keep winning.

I know you maybe didn’t appreciate my question so much the other day about these big games, but if you go in and beat Philly or the Rams or whoever it’s going to be in the first round of the playoffs, would you be back to that “looseness” sense that you guys were at last year? Like, you just need to get one?

I don’t know. Yeah, it’s disappointing because you’re sitting here at 11-5 and you’ve lost four division games, right? That’s what sucks. But those teams have obviously proven to be pretty damn good teams. But it just goes back to the margin of error in this league is so minimal. I know the Rams were missing Puka (Nacua) and they were missing Coop(er Kupp) when we played them but, still, it’s never easy to go on the road and win this league.

So, I feel like we’ve done a lot of good things but, ultimately, none of it matters. I shouldn’t say none of it matters. It all matters. But, at the end of the day, what matters is if you’re the last team standing, you know what I mean?

So, it’s just how do you get there? And my whole thing is if we can go out there and play our best, that’s all I can ask of anybody. And, like I said, it’s so competitive, and you’ve got to get some breaks along the way in order to get there, in my opinion. Now, hopefully, you can make your own breaks by how well you’re playing. But my mindset is one game. Right now, it’s on the Bears and then whatever happens after that, that’s great.

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