LaFleur: ‘We’re Going to Detroit to Win’

Don't tell Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur that Sunday's game against the Detroit Lions.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – With the No. 1 seed secured, Sunday’s game at the Detroit Lions is a meaningless one for the Green Bay Packers.

“I have a hard time going into any game saying it doesn’t mean anything,” coach Matt LaFleur corrected on Wednesday.

Even with nothing on the line from a standings and seeding perspective, LaFleur said his starters will start – injury risk by damned – and play at least some of the game in hopes of keeping his squad sharp and the momentum building toward the playoffs.

“I think every time you go out there, you’re trying to perform your best,” LaFleur said. “So, all our guys that are playing, which is the majority of our team, they’ve got to go in with the mindset that they’re going to play the entire game. As far as where that goes and if and when we decide to pull some guys, it’s going to be more of a feel-type thing than having a concrete plan going into this thing.

“The message to our team, and this is the way we truly feel, is we’re going to Detroit to win a football game.”

LaFleur’s club is in a rare position of having the No. 1 seed locked up with a game to play. His team had to win in Week 17 in 2019 to get the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye and it had to win in 2020 to get the No. 1 seed and homefield.

Last year, the Kansas City Chiefs had the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs locked up headed into their finale against the Chargers. Coach Andy Reid listed quarterback Patrick Mahomes and receiver Tyreek Hill – the equivalent of Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams – among his inactives. So, the Chiefs essentially had a Week 17 bye to go with their first-round playoff bye. With a long layoff, the Chiefs beat the Browns 22-17 in the divisional round on their way to a return trip to the Super Bowl.

LaFleur’s studied the history and come to the conclusion that his top players need to play – at least some – on Sunday.

“There’s different variables for every situation,” LaFleur said. “That’s why I think you’ve got to go with your gut in terms of how’s the game going? But we are going there with one mind, with one mindset, and that’s to go compete to the best of our ability and win a football game.”

That would make this the equivalent of a preseason game in which the starters play the first quarter or first half before they’re replaced by backups.

Just don’t call this a preseason game. The Lions aren’t going to treat it like a preseason, so his team can’t treat it like one, either. While Detroit is 2-13-1, it has two wins and three losses by a total of nine points in its last seven games. One of those wins was a blowout victory over Arizona, which at the time had the best record in the NFL.

“I have a hard time operating like that when it’s the regular season,” LaFleur said. “We’re going there to try to win a football game. We know that this team is going to give us everything they have and they’ve been extremely competitive. Especially at home, they’ve been really tough. They’ve lost some really tough games there and we, quite frankly, haven’t played all that great when we’ve gone to Ford Field. So, our guys are going to have to make sure that they’re in control of their energy and that mindset that, ‘Hey, we’re all-in for this week, and next week we can try to recover a little bit.’”