SPECIAL TEAMS
If this unit doesn’t improve substantially, LaFleur has nobody to blame but himself. After the front office low-balled his top choice two years ago (Darren Rizzi), the then anonymous rookie coach had few good options, so he wound up listening to Pettine and hired Sean Mennenga. It seemed like a poor choice at the time, and it was. To be fair, the coordinator shouldn’t receive all of the blame for the past two seasons. Gutekunst sure didn’t help by not providing quality returners. Darrius Shepherd and Malik Taylor got fans to stand up and cheer last season by bringing a kick out past the 20-yard line, and a successful punt return by Tavon Austin was simply holding onto the football. That said, Mennenga’s blocking schemes were too vanilla, and his players lacked toughness and discipline.
Given the chance to finally hire his own guy – this time with more clout behind his name – LaFleur chose to give the job to Maurice Drayton, who assisted Mennenga the prior two seasons. It’s the third time the Packers promoted the assistant to a failed special teams coordinator since 2008. Shaun Slocum and Ron Zook failed to improve things after taking over from Mike Stock and Slocum, respectively. Perhaps the third time will be the charm, although season-ending injuries to outside linebacker Randy Ramsey and defensive back Will Redmond won’t help the cover units. At least Drayton will have better returners, although neither rookie Amari Rodgers (punts) nor fellow frosh Kylin Hill (kicks) has the burst and explosiveness of Desmond Howard or even Tyler Ervin.
Mason Crosby returns for a 15th season, and he’s getting better with age. The 37-year-old has connected on 46 of his last 48 field goal attempts. Corey Bojorquez should be an upgrade from JK Scott, although the new guy had his own bouts of inconsistency in Buffalo. But he has a big leg, and when he mishyts a punt, he doesn’t mishyt it like Scott. Hunter Bradley will need to snap better than he did in 2020 if he’s to keep Steven Wirtel on the practice squad.
COACHING & FRONT OFFICE
Give Packers president and CEO Mark Murphy credit – LaFleur was the perfect hire for this particular job. His youth, energy, and creative mind were exactly what a stagnating team needed after back-to-back losing seasons under Mike McCarthy, and his personality was a great fit with the prickly and diva-ish star quarterback. Speaking of which, winning 26 of 32 games is pretty darn impressive even when blessed with having Rodgers under center. There’s no longer any doubt that LaFleur is a good head coach, although we won’t know just how good until No. 12 is gone.
This isn’t to suggest LaFleur is perfect. He’s already fired two coordinators and one position coach. Granted, one of the coordinators (Pettine) was pretty much forced on him, but it’s still worth noting that should-be Hall of Famer Mike Holmgren didn’t fire a single assistant in his seven years in Green Bay. LaFleur’s work in the last two NFC championship games is also deserving of some criticism. San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan badly outcoached him in 2019, and he made some, let’s just call them curious decisions, last January against the Bucs. Still, it’s hard to think of a half-dozen men the Packers would be better off having on the sideline going into the upcoming season.
While LaFleur missed badly with Mennenga and former wide receivers coach Alvis Whitted and the jury is still out on Barry and Drayton, the majority of his initial hires were very good. The two best have been arguably his two most questionable at the time – Hackett and offensive line coach Adam Stenavich. The former had just been fired in the middle of a brutal season with the Jaguars, and the latter was an unknown 35-year-old with only two years of experience in the NFL. Both have done great work and are destined for bigger and better things in the future. Ben Sirmans (running backs) and Justin Outten (tight ends) also deserve credit for developing young talent.
Back-to-back 13-3 seasons have Gutekunst riding high these days, but that could change in a hurry if Rodgers leaves after this season. The front office spent the spring restructuring seven contracts in what sure seems to be shaping up as Green Bay’s version of
The Last Dance. And while nobody will care if the Packers stink up the field in 2022, 2023, and even 2024 if there’s another parade in Wisconsin six months from now, most fans won’t be nearly so patient if multiple losing seasons follow yet another January disappointment.
Regardless of how the upcoming season turns out, it seems inevitable that young Jordan Love will be the team’s starting quarterback at this time a year from now. And let’s be 100% honest, that seemed to be the plan from the moment the former Utah State star was drafted in 2020. Whether that was the right move or not remains to be seen, but you have to give Gutekunst credit for having the courage of his convictions. It’s either going to leave him a Ron Wolf-like legend in Green Bay or quite possibly have him searching the want-ads for a new job as early as 2025.
After 44 months at the helm, Gutekunst’s been pretty conventional when it comes to roster building. Other than the day in March 2019 when he signed four free agents for $180 million, he hasn’t been particularly aggressive when it comes to acquiring quality players. And he sure hasn’t shown Wolf’s willingness to take chances. Trading Damarious Randall for DeShon Kizer and Josh Jackson for Isaac Yiadom pales in comparison to trading a No. 1 pick for a third-string quarterback (Brett Favre) or a No. 2 pick for a disgruntled tight end (Keith Jackson). At this point, Gutekunst is much more similar to Ted Thompson – just with more personality and less drafting acumen in the late rounds.
To be fair, Thompson was surrounded by some of the best young talent evaluators in the business when he was hired in 2005. Wolf handed him future general managers John Schneider, Reggie McKenzie, and John Dorsey. Conversely, Thompson handed Gutekunst a bunch of guys who’ve never attracted attention from other teams. Jon Eric-Sullivan, Milt Hendrickson, John Wojciechowski, and Matt Malaspina might be buddies with Gutekunst, but none of their resumes are particularly impressive. It would behoove the boss to go outside the building and find some talented underlings. It’s what Wolf did three decades ago and what Thompson never had to do in 12 years.
PREDICTION
Can the Packers get to the Super Bowl? Sure. They’re as good as any team in the NFC. But I just can’t shake the feeling that 2020 was their year, and they blew it. Everything, with the exception of losing Bakhtiari late, fell their way. They had the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. In the divisional round, they faced the beat-up Rams who were missing their No. 1 receiver (Cooper Kupp) and whose All-Pro defensive lineman (Aaron Donald) and starting quarterback (Jared Goff) were dealing with injuries that greatly diminished their effectiveness. They didn’t have to deal with the 49ers, who mentally and physically beat the living daylights out of them the previous January. And finally, they got to play the warm-weather Buccaneers at Lambeau in the NFC championship game. All that and they still fell short of the Super Bowl.
Maybe the Packers will take the tougher path to the promised land this year the way they did as the No. 6 seed in 2010, but that just seems like a lot to ask of a team with two new coordinators – neither of whom has anything on his respective resume to suggest he can do the job at a high level. Plus, who knows how the moody and enigmatic Rodgers will react if adversity hits at some point. Sure he said all the right things in August after a spring filled with drama, but that’s easy to do when nobody’s keeping score, and the offseason is still at least four months away.
Would I be shocked to see confetti cascading down on the heads of Gutekunst, LaFleur, team president Mark Murphy and 46 players wearing green and yellow uniforms at about 10:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 13, 2022? No, but I’d be surprised. The guess here is that the Packers will have another excellent regular season (11 or 12 wins) but fall short of their ultimate goal for an 11th straight year. And then, two months after yet another heartbreak, the best fans in the NFL will watch a fantastic, and at the same time, slightly disappointing era come to an end when No. 12 is traded.
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we already know he wasn't gonna be an upgrade
