The Chicago Bears are just over 24 hours away from opening up their 2019 season against the Green Bay Packers. This will also be the first time since 2005 that they will play an opener against their rival that doesn't have head coach Mike McCarthy on the sideline. This time it will be young Matt Lafleur, the former offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans. A man who is hoped will return Aaron Rodgers to his status as an MVP favorite and modernize some of the Packers offense.
It's not a bad plan from a basic point of view. A young coach with new ideas who has a background coaching quarterbacks. Many teams have followed this formula to success from Sean Payton down in New Orleans to Sean McVay in Los Angeles and most recently Matt Nagy in Chicago. It makes perfect sense for Green Bay to follow this formula. The NFL is a copycat league. It truly is adapt or die.
The lingering question is whether Lafleur is actually the right guy for the job. Sure he checks those boxes of young offensive mind. However, when one learns the details of how he was hired by the Packers, it's hard not to wonder if the team jumped the gun. Especially when Rob Demovsky of ESPN revealed his interview and hire for the job lasted all of three hours.
"Several of the 10 candidates -- LaFleur included -- thought the Packers would narrow the field to a few finalists, according to sources close to more than one of the interviewees. Instead, after Murphy, general manager Brian Gutekunst and executive vice president/director of football operations Russ Ball concluded the last of those interviews with LaFleur in Nashville, Tennessee, Murphy made up his mind before the wheels of their private jet touched down at Green Bay's Austin Straubel International Airport."
Matt Lafleur had the benefit of going last in the process
Hearing something like that, it makes one wonder if Lafleur truly knocked the interview out of the park. It would seem it did indeed go well, but how much could the Packers learn in just three hours? Only three top guys in the organization had met him. One of them was not Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback he was supposed to coach. There was also the reality that Lafleur had the benefit of going last in the series of 10 interviews. So his impression lingered a bit longer than others.
The Packers brass even admitted this was a concern but ended up ignoring it anyway.
Usually the last person does have an advantage because it's the lasting memory you have. When we concluded, I think we were all like, 'He was really good, but let's make sure it wasn't because he was the last one.'"
Back in Nashville, LaFleur expected that to be only part of the process.
"I was anticipating having to come up here and meet with more people," LaFleur said.
That turned out to be unnecessary.
"I think there might be an advantage in a second interview," Ball said. "I don't know that it's a requisite."
So what was the biggest reason they became so enamored with him?
This might be the best part. Green Bay danced around the subject a bit. There was one interest revelation though that stuck out. It came from back in 2016, the last time the Packers made the playoffs. A year where they saw the Altanta Falcons beat them twice, once in the regular season and again in the NFC championship while putting up a combined 77 points on them. The quarterbacks coach for that team? Yep, it was Lafleur.
"The offense that those guys run was something that for me was, back then, 'OK, this is tough for our people to deal with,'" Gutekunst said. "Obviously, they had really good personnel as well, but what they're doing makes life difficult on the defense, so I think I started taking notice and was more aware of what was going on with them."
Makes sense. Nevermind the fact that Lafleur wasn't the one orchestrating that offense. Or that when he tried to implement the system in Tennessee last year it finished 27th in scoring and 25th overall. Clearly all the Packers needed was three hours to know he was their savior.
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