Matt LaFleur has taken the Green Bay Packers to the playoffs in five of six full seasons as head coach, but he now faces questions about his future with the team.
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Is LaFleur coaching to keep his job the rest of this season, especially after a 10-7 primetime loss to the Eagles?
"I'll leave that for everybody else to decide," the coach said in response to a question from The Athletic's Matt Schneidman. "I'll just focus on the day-to-day and try to do — I feel like you're always coaching for everything in this league, you know?
"That's just my mindset. It's always been that way. You can't ever exhale. You gotta always be pushing. That's just my mindset and that will be my mindset 'til they tell me not to coach anymore."
The Packers aren't in the middle of a losing season. They fell to 5-3-1 on Monday night against the Eagles. However, LaFleur's team sits third in the NFC North behind the 6-3 Lions and 6-3 Bears. This puts the Packers on pace to make the playoffs as a wild card entry yet again.
One problem for the team is that the offense has struggled with consistency this season. The unit ranks eighth in total offense, buoyed by big games against the Cowboys (40 points), Steelers (35), Cardinals (27), Bengals (27), Commanders (27), and Lions (27).
However, this same offensive unit only scored seven points against the Eagles in a loss, 13 points against the Panthers in a loss, and 10 points against the Browns in a loss. According to The Athletic, this offense is only averaging 6.43 points in the first half over the last seven games.
If the Packers are potentially set for the sixth playoff appearance in LaFleur's seven seasons as head coach, why would he worry about coaching for his job? The simple answer is team president Ed Policy.
Policy is in his first season in this role with the Packers. His job is to determine whether LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst are the right men to get the team back into championship contention. Both are under contract through next season, but that does not necessarily provide security if the Packers continue to fall short of expectations.
