A Tale of Two Coaches

It was a cold and windy this past Monday morning and while waiting the floors to dry after mopping them, I sat down at my laptop to see what was up in the world. Much to my surprise I read that the Buffalo Bills had fired their head coach, Sean McDermott. This was surprising, because while he failed to get the Bills to a Super Bowl, he did have better success than Matt LaFleur in Green Bay, who had just been resigned to a mega deal of $15 million or more annually and for what some have said is another four to five years. This tale of two coaches will provide a comparison into how organizations view the desire for a Super Bowl.

With the release of McDermott, Matt LaFleur now  becomes the longest tenured coach in the NFL to not have advanced his team to the Super Bowl. (He is now the fourth longest tenured coach in the NFL, behind Andy Reid (KC), Sean McVay (LA Rams), Kyle Shanahan (SF).) With his new contract, it seems the Packers are intent to extend that streak another four or five, or who knows how many years. The Packers were recently said to be somewhat of a mom and pop organization when it took a week for them to resign Mediocre Matt. Perhaps, if they were more mom and pop, they would be listening more to the fan base who seem to be sick and tired of the softness of the Packers which is now embedded in their culture. Instead of doing to other teams, they let other teams do unto them. One only need to look at the second half collapses the team has had this year, twice to the Bears, to perennial doormat Cleveland, to Carolina to Denver and then there was the tie in Dallas. High priced QB Jordan Love has failed to deliver and seems, in many games, to fade in the second half. After most every loss, Mediocre Matt takes the blame, but for years now has failed to fix the issue. His common complaint when they lose is that he failed to properly prepare the team. For example after the loss to Cleveland, this was part of his comments: "When you have 14 penalties in a game, that's going to be tough to overcome that. We have to do a much better job coaching the fundamentals, the details, and we have to lock in at a high level in regards to the controllable penalties." This begs the question of why they have not been doing a better job of coaching fundamentals? Well, if after several years, that is not fixed, it is time to look elsewhere. For a few years now I have said that Matt has reached his ceiling. I am sure he will say the same old, same old next year, and it is not just getting old, it is old.

Matt, 2020 photo
With his new contract he has even more money to spend on his hair

I think the Bills felt the same way about Sean McDermott, and hence the reason for his being released. Anyway, let us compare the two coaches, and from this comparison one can judge which organization is looking forward and which one is looking to continued mediocrity.

McDermott has coached the Bills for nine full seasons, going 98-50 for a .666 winning percentage. He has won five AFC East titles, which means competing with the Patriots, placed second in the division three times, and third one time. He had five consecutive AFC East titles, from 2020 through 2024. He has made the playoffs in all but one year as a coach and overall posted a record of 8-8 in the playoffs for a .500 winning percentage. In the AFC he has had to face the normal power house Kansas City Chiefs, and they lost to the Chiefs twice in the AFC Championship game and twice in the divisional round. 

Sean McDermott, 2019

Now, let us look at Matt LaFailure. Matt has coached the Packers for seven seasons, going 76-40-1 for a winning percentage of .654. He has won three NFC North titles, where few teams posed a threat in the first few seasons, when the team was QB'd by Aaron Rodgers. All three first place finishes came in his first three years. After the first three years, he has placed second twice and third twice. He has made the playoff for six of his seven seasons. He reached the NFC Championship game twice (first two years) and both years the team had late collapses due to poor play calling and dumb decisions by coaches and players, a trend that has continued. The next two years he lost in the Divisional round, and the last two years in the Wildcard round. 

In other words, Mediocre Matt is trending down and flat. Some blame it on loss of key players to injury this season, but the last Packer Super Bowl team had a number of injuries to key players too. By this point in the season all teams deal with injuries. 

Looking at the last five years you can see that Matt has come into his own in regard to mediocrity. Starting in 2023 Jordan Love took over and the team's mediocrity has allowed the organization to stall. McDermott, over those five years had a regular season winning percentage of .714, whereas the Packer head coach's winning percentage was .588. For playoff games Matt even fails in his mediocre moniker, as he is 1-4 thus a winning percentage of .2, compared to McDermott who was 6-5 with a winning percentage of .545. 

Comparison of Two Coaches, last five seasons

When at the YMCA in Madison using the exercise bikes, they have two of like five televisions tuned to sports, one has ESPN (otherwise known as the Mouthpiece of the SEC), and the other I don't know the channel but when there it plays a Good Morning Football broadcast. Anyway, it is amazing that last week Thursday the talking heads were whining about Matt not yet getting resigned at GB and wondered if they were looking at John Harbaugh. Pretty much, they all thought Matt should be resigned. This past Tuesday (1/20), I did not see the reaction to the McDermott firing on the GMF broadcast, but did see the ESPN and most of the talking heads thought McDermott should be fired for wasting Josh Allen and not getting the team to the Super Bowl. Stephen A complained that they did not have enough around Josh. Same complaints we heard about Aaron Rodgers with the Packers. So, if as Brainless and the Packers feel, Jordan Love is a top tier QB, are they wasting his years, too? I wonder why the double standard, is it because they feel that Allen is a much better QB and they are wasting his talent?  One could say that Green Bay is where, due to poor leadership, talent goes to die.

The problem with the Packers is, in my opinion, is one thing. The organization has been controlled by two persons with little vesting in Wisconsin. First, was Mark Murphy, who was more concerned about being a real estate developer in the Titletown District than about bringing titles to Titletown. Second, Mark Murphy hired the Brainless Gutekunst as GM who would not know good talent to draft if it fell in his lap. The team is now controlled by Ed Policy, who is in his first eight months of running the team, and whose father ran the 49ers for a number of years. Neither are Wisconsinites, and were only transplants for jobs with the team. They seem to think of the team as their little sandbox and as long as fans are in the stands, and they make money, they do not care about titles. With the two of them the Packer moniker will need to change to "Titlelesstown" Quite the opposite of the Bills organization. Ed has found the coach he wants, just good enough to get to the playoffs, and lose in the Wildcard, but no more. Mark was happy to make a lot of money off the Packers to buy a golf course in Door County.

Because of its unique status in the NFL the team needs to be run by a person more invested in Green Bay or Wisconsin. In the situation of Green Bay, they need more mom and pop in the operation because the outsiders who come in are not fully vested with the community and its team. They need someone who knows and feels the pain of the fanbase. The outsiders, like Murphy and Policy are not embedded in the Wisconsin culture. If they were, they would know how the recent decision to continue with Mediocre Matt LaFailure is met with disdain by much of the fan base. Where are the Board of Directors on all of this? Matt LaFailure got the better of Ed Policy, but getting the long-term contract which some say is four years (five with a year remaining) and others say five year extension (six?).  This long-term extension is a pricey bet, as Dairyland Express wrote this week. If, and it is certainly not a big IF, Matt continues with his mediocrity when will the Packers make a move for a new head coach? Wait to his contract is almost up, so years more of mediocrity? Or will they have to eat say $30-$45 million or more for his contract and then also the pay for the new coach? In a sense, it may well be, and if so is unfortunate, that the lack of one owner is working against the Packer organization. 

Packer fans like to say "The Bears suck." But, the Packers have collapsed in two games to the Bears in a matter of weeks. If the Bears suck, what does that make the Packers?

With the NFL being rigged to a certain degree, there perhaps is not much they can do. The NFL favors large market teams, or those with star power. The Chargers and Rams have trouble filling a stadium, not to mention Jacksonville, but the Roger Goddell likes Tinseltown. Think  also of Taylor Swift, the biggest star, and the KC Chiefs. The color of the referee jersey's in KC games was not black and white, but red and white. Clearly calls were or were not made to benefit the Chiefs. This has been attributed to Patrick Mahomes and later the pop singer Taylor Swift who was dating, and now is engaged, to Chief's tight end Travis Kelce.

Meme on referee's favoring Kansas City

My prediction is Matt will continue with his mediocrity, not able to get players to perform, to have regular collapses in the second half, not clean up special teams, not to mention the many dumb penalties that result in stalled drives. After all, how often does a team get a delay of game penalty AFTER having used a time out? The definition of incompetence in professional football is not the Raiders, but the Jordan Love, and the Packer coaching staff. Reporting on the contract extension, nfl.com reported: "Lost leads characterized LaFleur's seventh season in Green Bay. The Packers became the first team since the 1970 merger to lose three tilts when leading by 10-plus points in the final five minutes of the game, including playoffs -- Week 3 to Cleveland, Week 16 and Wild Card Round to Chicago." Matt has a good record of the Packers getting records, just the wrong ones. Leave it to the poorly coached Packers to do that (Wildcard game in Chicago). Brainless Gutekunst will continue to over pay certain players leading to poor performance (think Jordan Love who fails when he is needed to succeed). This then leaves little for other players that matter. Gutekunst has a habit of forgetting about the O-line. And, his top defensive backs leave much to be desired. Gutekunst and coaches wasted Aaron Rodgers, and perhaps Jordan Love (if he is as good as they think he is to make him one of the top five QB's in the NFL). The Bills do not wish to do the same for Josh Allen, who is truly regarded as one of the best. As Green Bay found out with Aaron Rodgers, the QB cannot do it alone, and for twenty years, until 2025 never used a first round pick on a wide receiver. Which may be well given Gutekunst's inability to properly realize talent out of college. Gutekunst has lacked a strong record of success. 

When LaFailure continues his lack of success for the next few years, I believe it time for a revolt of Packer fans to force wholesale changes first in the Board of Directors, and second in the whole management and coaching staff of the organization. Ttitletown is but a long ago memory, and it is time the organization takes its self-imposed moniker seriously. Sixty years later they are still living off Vince Lombardi. Unfortunately, with a tale of  two coaches we see what team takes getting to a Super Bowl seriously, and it is not the Packers. LaFleur and this organization from the chair of Board of Directors on down is no Dominic Olejnicczak and Vince Lombardi (Lombardi was 9-1 in the post season). Of course, we cannot expect outsider Policy, who is the de facto chair, to remove himself, it will have to come from the bottom up. The organization, like the coach on the field, is not willing to make the right call at the right moment, instead it revels in a melodious mediocrity.