News reports Packers must follow up a surprising season by dealing with heightened expect
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur began the offseason with a message for a team that overcame inexperience to reach the divisional round of the playoffs.
The days of catching opponents by surprise are over.
”Just because we got to a certain spot doesn’t mean that’s guaranteed moving forward,” LaFleur said Monday at his season-ending news conference. ”So what are we going to do to get better? And the expectation is that when they come back April 15th, they’re better than the team that left today, and that’s not just going to happen by chance.”
The Packers (10-9) were the youngest team to win a playoff game since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, according to the Elias Sports Bureau’s ”weighted age” metric, which factors in how many games in which a player appeared.
They bounced back from a 1-5 start to sneak into the playoffs with the NFC’s No. 7 seed. They beat the second-seeded Dallas Cowboys 48-32 and led the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers most of the way before falling 24-21.
The Packers believe they’re ready to contend for years now that quarterback Jordan Love has shown he’s a worthy successor to four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers, who got traded to the New York Jets last April.
But they must prove they can handle heightened expectations.
”There’s going to be guys kind of patting us on our back and telling us the future’s bright and all that kind of stuff,” defensive lineman Kenny Clark said. ”We’ve got to stick to that feeling of we were that seven seed working to get here. We’ve got to just keep putting in work, not getting too big-headed about what we did.”
STAFF ADJUSTMENTS
After the Packers missed the playoffs last year, LaFleur said at his season-ending news conference that he anticipated bringing back all his assistant coaches. He was noncommittal on that subject Monday.
”I want to certainly sit down with every assistant before any decisions are made,” LaFleur said.
Green Bay’s defense struggled so much that LaFleur was asked at one point about the possibility of changing coordinators while the season was still underway, though the defense performed much better after Christmas.
