GREEN BAY — It’s been so long since Matt LaFleur posted on his X account, @CoachMLaFleur, that it might’ve still been called Twitter the last time he did.
And so the Green Bay Packers head coach missed all the fun that folks were having at his expense — clearly laughing at him, not with him — after last Monday night’s loss to the defending Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles, when the offense he designed (and the one for which he calls the plays) managed only seven points.
It got so bad that the offensive ineptitude had LaFleur in the rear of the home bench area at Lambeau Field, searching for answers with his call sheet and his tablet resting on a nearby cart-turned-makeshift desk, which sent the internet into meme-making mode, positing that LaFleur was doing everything from Googling ideas for plays to playing Fruit Ninja to ordering a pizza.
No, Matt LaFleur wasn’t ordering a pizza. 🍕What the #Packers coach was doing — in the moment on Monday night, and throughout the week after that — was working to find solutions.“As frustrated as anybody may be out there, I promise you that you’re not as frustrated as I am.” pic.twitter.com/t8Fh1zbLLI
— Jason Wilde (@jasonjwilde) November 16, 2025
“I didn’t even see that,” LaFleur said of the online mockery. “I was not ordering a pizza.”
All kidding aside, LaFleur spent the week leading up to Sunday’s matchup between his Packers (5-3-1) and the New York Giants (2-8) at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., taking the job of jump-starting his offense very, very seriously.
Having managed a combined 20 points in back-to-back losses to the Carolina Panthers and the Eagles — at home, no less — LaFleur fully understands both what’s at stake and the challenges he and the offense are facing.
With an offensive line that has been unable to open up holes for running back Josh Jacobs, a passing game that has lost its No. 1 threat, tight end Tucker Kraft, for the rest of the year to a torn ACL and a quarterback in Jordan Love who has gone from having a legitimate case to make for the NFL MVP award to failing to throw a touchdown pass in the last two games, things have not been easy.
But as LaFleur often says, no one is going to feel sorry for you in the NFL. Get to work. Figure it out. Be better.
That’s exactly what LaFleur and the offensive coaching staff did this week. Now, it’s time to show that their problem-solving efforts did indeed have an impact.
“I promise you as frustrated as anybody may be out there, I promise you that you’re not as frustrated as I am,” LaFleur said. “I believe in our guys. So it’s all about just finding solutions, and I can’t worry about what has happened in the past. It’s happened, unfortunately.
“You’d better have a short-term memory and you’ve got to move on. [That’s] not to say that you don’t take that into account. Certainly, you study the tape and you try to be critical of everything — from yourself to the [execution of the] play and everything in between. We’re working hard at it. I promise you. We’re working hard.
“[But the] bottom line is on Sunday, we have to go out and perform better.”
It feels like eons ago that the Packers hung 28 second-half points on the Pittsburgh Steelers on the road and Love completed 20 consecutive passes with a national television audience watching on “Sunday Night Football.”
Since then, the Packers have gone from tied for fifth in scoring to 15th (23.7 points per game). They’re now 12th in total offense (349.3 yards per game) despite being the best team in the league on third down (a 47.8% conversion rate).
“Just the execution, the details, focusing on the little things on every play. That’s everybody — every position, every group,” said Love, who came out of that Pittsburgh game completing 70.9% of his passes for 1,798 yards with 13 touchdowns, two interceptions and 10 sacks for a 112.8 passer rating — but enters Sunday’s game having completed only 63% of his passes for 449 yards with no touchdowns, one interception, one lost fumble and four sacks for a 74.5 rating in the last two games.
“It’s just focusing on those little, little details, because they all add up and turn great plays into sometimes negative plays.”
LaFleur has spoken ad nauseam about the way opposing defenses are keeping their safeties back to create an umbrella that prevents big plays and forces Love into a take-what-you-can-get mode of hitting underneath passes and checkdowns while canning to run plays when the defensive look demands it.
The easiest solution would be for the moribund run game to get in gear, which would in turn force defenses to devote more resources to stopping Jacobs, which would then lead to more opportunities in the passing game.
And while LaFleur said he wasn’t contemplating giving up his play-calling duties, he knows it’s up to him more than anyone to get the offense going again.
“You have to look inward,” said LaFleur, whose outfits have finished lower 11th in total offense only twice in his previous years as head coach — in 2019, his first year at the helm, and in 2022, the only year the Packers missed the playoffs during his tenure.
“Like I told the team, I don’t care if we win 3-0 or 49-48. Bottom line is we have to find a way to get it done. Otherwise you get criticized, and that’s just the way it is.
“Especially as the play-caller, you’re trying to put people in the best position possible to go out there and have success. And when we’re not having collective success … you have to challenge yourself to do better, to find something else in order to go out there and move the ball and score points.”
In the meantime, a defense that has done most of the heavy lifting in recent weeks stands ready to continue doing so until LaFleur can get the offense revved up again.
“I’ve got confidence our offense is going to go out — and this is no disrespect to the Giants — and we’re going to score a lot of points,” said defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, whose unit enters Sunday’s games ranked seventh in scoring defense (19.6 points per game and fifth in total defense (287.2 yards per game.
“That’s one of the best head coaches in all of the NFL and one of the best play-callers, who I still hate going against [in practice] in two-minute because he’s really hard to defend.
“They’re going to get going. Two weeks ago, we were talking about what we did against the Pittsburgh Steelers on offense. So, we’re going to be OK.”
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