Matt LaFleur is quietly forging the mindset that could keep the Packers from falling into a costly trap game no one saw coming.QQ
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur wants the focus of his team on the Denver Broncos.
The Green Bay Packers have just won three divisional games in a row, moving up to the first place in the NFC North and with the second seed in the NFC. In less than two weeks, they have another huge divisional game against the Chicago Bears once again, so it could be easy to forget there’s a big challenge between now and the trip to Chicago.
On Sunday, the Packers face the 11-2 Denver Broncos, one of the hottest defenses in football, and a loss there would be highly negative to the team’s fight for the playoff bye and for the divisional title. Head coach Matt LaFleur knows it, and he doesn’t want any distractions after the Packers lost some theoretical easy games to the Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers.
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“We’ve got a great test in front of us going to Denver,” LaFleur said. “We’ve got a great challenge in front of us and I don’t think you can focus on anything other than that. Obviously we’re going to get together. We’re going to watch the game. There’s a lot of stuff to clean up. I thought there was an opportunity in the second half (against the Chicago Bears) to kind of pull away knowing that we were getting the ball, and to go three-and-out to start the second half was not great.”
NFC North race is heating up
Right now, the Packers are first in the NFC North with a 9-3-1 record. But if they lose to the Broncos, considering the Bears face the Browns on Sunday, they move down to the second place again. So LaFleur knows that being at the top now isn’t what truly matters.
“It means nothing right now. I mean, it means a lot, but also there’s four weeks left, and you’ve got to take it day by day,” LaFleur added. “You’ve got to really embrace that grind, embrace the challenge. It’s not going to be easy from here on out. We’ve got a great test in Denver coming up, and our guys really got to push and try to find any competitive advantage that we can get in order to go out there on the road against a really quality opponent and find a way to get a win.”
It’s finally an AFC game after so many NFC North matchups, but the Packers can’t take it lightly. It’s as impactful a game as there could be, against one of the top seeds in the other side of the bracket, and the Packers need to keep stacking wins to reach the level they want. For Matt LaFleur and the Packers, the next game has always to be the most important.
