Matt LaFleur breaks the silence with a blunt admission as the Packers’ painful loss to the Bears exposes a truth Green Bay can’t ignore.QQ
Packers had two games left in the regular season, and things are not looking great right now.
It might be easy to blame special teams, and as a consequence coordinator Rich Bisaccia. In the big picture, the veteran coach does deserve criticism after his unit consistently underperforms — by DVOA, for example, it entered Week 16 ranked 21st in the NFL this season.
But the reasons for the heartbreaking loss to the Chicago Bears on Saturday night go beyond coaching, for the most part. On the onside kick play recovered by the Bears with two minutes left, blocking was fine, alignment was correct, and wide receiver Romeo Doubs was there to catch the football. Ultimately, he didn’t.
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“I saw the ball,” head coach Matt LaFleur said after the game. “I was watching the ball the whole time. As far as whether it was a blocked ball, I don’t know. I have to go back and watch the tape. But I thought we had an opportunity to field the ball. We just didn’t field the ball.”
While LaFleur doesn’t like to blame individual players for mistakes, that’s what happened. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s real. Doubs should have caught the football and wasn’t able to execute.
“I missed it,” Doubs admitted in the locker room. “That’s just this game. I rep this [expletive] all week and yeah, somebody’s gotta be responsible and I’m willing to take on 1000% of it.”
It wasn’t just the onside kick
While the Packers would have won the game with the onside kick recovery, that wasn’t the only costly mistake.
“It’s never one play, though,” LaFleur added. “There were so many plays in this game that if they go different, or if we make a play, or if we don’t fumble, or if we aren’t 0-for-5 in the red zone, it’s never just one play and it’s never just one phase.”
The loss complicated the Packers’ playoff picture to a certain extent, and now they have to win out to avoid depending on a Detroit Lions loss in the final few weeks. But LaFleur believes his roster can still turn things around.
“I have so much confidence in our guys,” LaFleur explained. “They will rally around each other, support one another, lift the guys that need to be lifted up, and battle. We saw tonight that our guys competed for 60-plus minutes, including overtime, and I’m really proud of their effort. But unfortunately, we didn’t get the outcome that we all desired.”
Life hasn’t been easy for the Packers. But to overcome those challenges, the Packers have to find the real reasons for the underwhelming performance.
