For the second straight year, the Green Bay Packers have lost in the wild-card round, and the latest defeat was particularly painful. Not only did Green Bay lose to the rival Chicago Bears, but they also blew a 21-3 halftime lead while doing so.
The offense failed to move the ball consistently in the second half. Kicker Brandon McManus—who was retained despite struggling through a hamstring injury during the regular season—left seven points on the board with missed field-goal and extra-point attempts. Green Bay’s defense was seemingly nowhere to be found.
Unsurprisingly, head coach Matt LaFleur has and will continue to garner a good amount of criticism for the collapse.
After guiding Green Bay to the NFC title game in each of his first two seasons, LaFleur has now gone five straight seasons without making it past the divisional round. Fans and media members are likely to spend the next several days debating his job security, and whether he should have any at all.
Things certainly feel different than they did before Saturday’s game, when word broke that the Packers planned to engage with LaFleur in extension talks.
“Sources say the Packers plan to engage head coach Matt LaFleur in contract discussions shortly after the season ends, with the mutual goal of extending his contract,” NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport wrote on Saturday.
Should the Packers pivot from their purported plan now that they’ve been dealt another early playoff exit? No, and there are multiple reasons why.
Saturday’s Loss Deserves Some Perspective
Let’s get one thing out of the way. The Packers shouldn’t even consider firing LaFleur over two bad quarters and one disappointing loss. As bad as that second half was, it’s worth giving the loss some context.
Green Bay was on the road in a hostile environment, playing a very familiar opponent. Sure, the Bears have a new head coach this year, but Ben Johnson spent the previous six seasons with the Detroit Lions. The Packers were always guaranteed to take their best shot in this matchup. That’s just how it is against the Bears.
If there’s a coach who knows how to attack Jeff Hafley’s defense, it’s Johnson.
Chicago and Green Bay split their last four regular-season games, all contests decided by a touchdown or less. Saturday’s outcome wasn’t surprising. While those final two quarters certainly won’t be digested well by fans, they shouldn’t cause Packers management to have a knee-jerk reaction.
“There is one truth that should not be discounted: LaFleur is not coaching for his job tonight, sources say,” Rapoport wrote before the game.
Instead of faulting LaFleur for falling flat in the final half of the season, Green Bay should credit him for making the postseason for the third straight season. Let’s not ignore the fact that this is an extremely young roster that lost key players in Tucker Kraft, Micah Parsons, and Elgton Jenkins to season-ending injuries.
The Packers were without standout offensive lineman Zach Tom on Saturday, too.
Green Bay still got into the dance. The Lions and Minnesota Vikings missed the playoffs after winning 15 and 14 games, respectively, a year ago. Neither Dan Campbell nor Kevin O’Connell appears to be on the hot seat heading into the offseason.
If you’re a Packers fan, the collapse stinks, and no one’s going to deny that. However, firing a coach for losing on the road to the NFC’s No. 2 seed would be short-sighted.
Firing LaFler This Offseason Would Be a Mistake Anyway
Look, there must be some accountability for what just transpired in Chicago. LaFleur may have to consider moving on from special-teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia, whose unit has been frustrating all year. He might even consider making some changes to the defensive staff, especially considering that side of the ball was largely average after losing Parsons.
To be fair, defensive changes may be coming anyway, as coordinator Hafley is drawing interest as a head-coaching candidate.
What the Packers should look to avoid is being in the market for a new head coach this cycle. LaFleur has coached Green Bay for seven seasons and reached the playoffs in six of them. Making a change for the sake of change would be silly.
That’s what the Baltimore Ravens did when they fired John Harbaugh, of course, but Harbaugh had been around for 18 years and didn’t even deliver a .500 campaign in 2025.
And outside of Harbaugh, this year’s crop of coaching candidates is fairly underwhelming. Kevin Stefanski, Raheem Morris, and Mike McDaniel, all recently fired, are drawing interest. Neither can be viewed as an obvious upgrade over LaFleur. Former Bears coach Matt Nagy is getting interest, too, as is former Packers coach Mike McCarthy.
McCarthy isn’t coming back to Green Bay, and Packers fans might boycott if Nagy took the reins.
Adding to the issue of a shallow coaching pool is the fact that eight other teams are looking to fill vacancies—and, presumably, hoping to be in on the Harbaugh sweepstakes.
Not even Harbaugh would be a clear-cut better option than LaFleur. Sure, he’s won a Super Bowl, but that was after the 2012 season. He was unable to get back to the big game, despite having a two-time MVP in Lamar Jackson.
While LaFleur certainly made some questionable decisions on Saturday, he’s helped Jordan Love develop into one of the league’s better young signal-callers. That, combined with the reality that Green Bay has been consistently competitive under LaFleur, makes him the right coach for the Packers heading into 2026.
Even if the Packers had missed the playoffs entirely, there would be logic in retaining LaFleur for the foreseeable future. Green Bay just experienced a significant change in upper management, with new CEO and team president Ed Policy replacing Mark Murphy, who had been on the job since 2007.
According to Rapoport, the Packers didn’t extend LaFleur last offseason because “the entire plan” was for him to have two years remaining on his deal when the new CEO took over.
Policy, who has been with the Packers since being hired as vice president and general counsel in 2012, should know just how important continuity has been to the franchise over the years.
Green Bay has regularly been one of the NFL’s most relevant franchises because it has gone more than three decades with stability at quarterback. Lave has become a worthy heir to Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre in LaFleur’s system, and there’s no reason to change his situation while the Packers’ playoff window is still wide open.
Starting over with a new head coach, especially one who hasn’t had the year-to-year success of LaFleur, could be disastrous for Love and the rest of Green Bay’s young playmakers. It’s at least worth seeing how this team looks in 2026, with a healthier roster and, possibly, a few changes to the coaching hierarchy.
And if the Packers are going to give LaFleur another season to continue building this team, an extension would still make sense. They don’t need the distraction of their head coach working in a lame-duck season—or the risk of losing him in a year when better offers started coming in from teams looking to poach LaFleur.
Make no mistake, the 46-year-old LaFleur would be in high demand this offseason if he were to be fired, wild-card collapse or no.
There may come a time when LaFleur loses the locker room or things simply grow stale in Green Bay. That time hasn’t come just yet, and until it does, LaFleur remains the best option for Green Bay.
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