LaFleur Continues Pursuit of Latest 1-0 Season
Matt LaFleur is doing something rare.
He’s winning.
LaFleur is 7-1 in his debut season as Green Bay Packers coach. The rest of the NFL’s Coaching Class of 2019 is an appalling 10-41-1. None of the others even has a winning record. Arizona’s Kliff Kingsbury is 3-4-1 but those three victories have come against teams with a total of three wins; Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians is 2-5; Cleveland’s Freddie Kitchens is 2-5; Denver’s Vic Fangio is 2-6; the Jets’ Adam Gase is 1-6; Miami’s Brian Flores is 0-7; and Cincinnati’s Zac Taylor is 0-8.
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What LaFleur has accomplished during the first half of his first season is remarkable. In 1959, Vince Lombardi was 3-5 and loser of five straight. In 1992, Mike Holmgren was 4-4 and had just snapped a three-game losing streak in which his team was outscored by 47 points. In 2000, Mike Sherman was 3-5. In 2006, Mike McCarthy was 3-5.
There have been no victory laps for LaFleur. Practicing what he’s preaching, the Packers are coming off a fourth consecutive 1-0 season following a 31-24 win at Kansas City.
“I don’t sit back and think about it too much,” LaFleur said on Monday. “It’s just on to the next game just because I know how hard it is to win each and every week. If you don’t put all your energy into that, you’re not going to be as successful. Luckily for myself and our staff, we’ve come into a pretty good situation where we’ve got a lot of good players – not only good football players but good people – and I can’t say enough about that locker room, the guys pulling all in the same direction with one common goal and that is to go 1-0 every week.”
Going “1-0 every week” is about as cliché as it gets. It’s meant to bring on a sense of tunnel vision. What happened on Sunday no longer matters. What’s coming up doesn’t matter, either. The only thing that matters is this week’s opponent. In this case, that’s the Los Angeles Chargers, who snapped a three-game losing streak by winning at Chicago on Sunday.
“Probably beating a dead horse,” LaFleur said of his messaging. “I mean, yeah, it’s a consistent message day in and day out.”
Having taken advantage of the absence of six Kansas City starters, including MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the Packers will get an unofficial ninth home game this week against the Chargers. After that, the Packers will host Carolina before getting a Week 10 bye to get fresh for a showdown at undefeated San Francisco.
LaFleur doesn’t want that kind of talk in the locker room. So far, his messaging and the internal leadership have kept the team focused on the latest 1-0 season.
“I think it’s kind of human nature,” LaFleur said of looking ahead. “I think our guys have really taken to that and bought into taking it one game at a time and try to do your very best to get prepared for that game, because this league, you can’t take anything for granted in this league. You look at yesterday, they were missing a bunch of starters. You better come ready to play each and every day.”
