There were a handful of reasons why the Green Bay Packers lost to the Chicago Bears in Week 18, but head coach Matt LaFleur was undoubtedly the biggest reason.
LaFleur is one of the top coaches in the NFL; there’s no doubt about that. With that said, he completely botched the end-of-game scenarios against the Bears, and it cost his team a chance at finishing 12-5 with a little bit of momentum heading into the Wild Card round of the NFC playoffs against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Ultimately, winning wouldn’t even have mattered much because the Washington Commanders beat the Dallas Cowboys to lock up the sixth seed, but LaFleur’s terrible clock management at the end of the game absolutely cost the Packers a game against their biggest rival. You can say it doesn’t matter, and momentum doesn’t carry over to the playoffs, as quarterback Jordan Love did after the loss, but this was a failure of epic proportions by LaFleur.
The thing is, the players in his locker room — and specifically on his defense — gave Green Bay a great chance to win the game and extend the Packers’ winning streak over the Bears to 12 games.
The Bears had the ball, up 21-19, after the two-minute warning, but a quick pass from quarterback Caleb Williams out in the flat ended up being fumbled by D.J. Moore thanks to a terrific hit from cornerback Carrington Valentine. The Packers got the ball back with 1:55 to go at the Chicago 43 and seemingly had to just burn some clock and gain a few yards before setting up for a field goal attempt. Keep in mind, that the Bears only had one timeout left to use.
LaFleur called two ho-hum plays but kept the clock moving to set the Packers up with a third-and-two. The first mistake in the ensuing comedy of errors was that quarterback Malik Willis — in for an injured Love — snapped the ball with over 20 seconds left on the game clock, which meant Green Bay’s third downplay happened with 1:05 to go in the game rather than well below one minute.
LaFleur was at least smart enough to call a run in that situation, so even though Emmanuel Wilson went backward for two yards, that hypothetically would have kept the clock running and bled more time.
The problem was that facing fourth-and-four from the Chicago 36, LaFleur panicked and wasn’t sure if he wanted to go for it or attempt the 55-yard field goal. The broadcast caught LaFleur frantically discussing the situation with associate head coach and special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia before he inexplicably called a timeout with 58 seconds left in the game.
Keep in mind, there were still 25 seconds left on the play clock, so even had LaFleur wanted to call that timeout, he could have done so at 33 seconds or, at the very least, forced Chicago to use its last timeout.
Instead, the Packers went up by a point thanks to a clutch Brandon McManus field goal, but that extra time left on the clock allowed the Bears to move into field goal position and win the game with a clutch field goal of their own with time expiring.
Matt LaFleur took blame for the Packers’ loss to the Bears
After the contest, LaFleur, at the very least, took blame for his boneheaded clock management, according to Rob Demovsky of ESPN.
“That’s squarely on me,” LaFleur said. “Just got caught in a situation where we were planning on going for it. They felt like Brandon could make that field goal. Hindsight’s 20/20, and I wish I wouldn’t have taken the timeout because it gave them, obviously, way too much time to go down and operate. Like I told the team, that’s on me, that can’t happen. So we’ve got to wipe this as soon as possible. It’s a new season now.”
LaFleur is right that the Packers are now facing a new challenge. They, at the very least, made the playoffs as the seventh seed, and hypothetically, they have the same chance as anyone else in the NFC as making the Super Bowl.
All it takes is the opportunity to get hot, and the Packers do, at the very least, have that opportunity.
There are bigger questions remaining in Green Bay, though, and there will certainly be a slew of questions if LaFleur’s suspect play-calling and game management rears its ugly head once again in the playoffs.
Again, he’s a successful head coach. His 67-33 record in his six seasons in Green Bay is tough to argue against.
With that said, the irony of losing that game to the Bears was all too evident, considering that Matt Eberflus was fired earlier this season by Chicago for his bevy of questionable in-game calls and clock mismanagement faux pas.
Eberflus was constantly outcoached, and it cost him his job. Granted, he didn’t have the win-loss record that LaFleur boasts, but ultimately, not being able to come up right in big moments like this one is what got Eberflus fired.
LaFleur is far from being Eberflus-ed, but the expectations are high in Green Bay, and the patience for a coach who’s always talking about accountability but never seems to make any progress on it himself will wear thin if the Packers continue to put more years between them and their last Super Bowl win.
