Acme Packing Company
For weeks, ESPN’s NFL insider Adam Schefter has been consistent in saying that the Green Bay Packers and head coach Matt LaFleur want to get an extension done, with the issue not being the Packers’ desire to keep LaFleur but instead the price it would cost to keep LaFleur. On Wednesday, days after this alleged meeting between LaFleur and president/CEO Ed Policy was supposed to take place and set the record straight about the future path of the organization, Schefter gave some updates to ESPN Wisconsin.
When asked where the two sides stand, Schefter said the following:
Yeah, there’s no deal right now. It’s a negotiation. And when it’s a negotiation, and there’s no deal, there can be a breakthrough any moment. Again, I think both sides would like to make that happen.
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The more it lingers out there, the more you wonder where it’s going to go and how it’s going to result. The way, right now, that I would interpret it: It’s up in the air.
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By the way, if you’re Green Bay, and you don’t want to pay him, and I’m Matt LaFleur, I’m saying, “If you don’t want to pay me, then let me go.”
It sure seems like LaFleur has a price in mind and wants the Packers to pay it. With nine open head coaching jobs in the NFL, if LaFleur were on the market, a five-year, $15 million per year deal wouldn’t be some shocking figure, based on my understanding of where the league is at right now. Now, with that being said, is Green Bay willing to commit $75 million (the industry standard is for a coaching contract to be guaranteed in the NFL) for LaFleur, especially after how the team stumbled in the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears? That’s the big question.
But LaFleur and his camp seem to have a good feel of their number and are comfortable holding that line. Personally, I believe that it’s about the money (not necessarily one-year spend but the commitment to all the guarantees that LaFleur would get on the open market), as Schefter has been reporting for some time now. If the Packers wanted to dump LaFleur, that would have been a quick conversation. If they wanted to pay LaFleur his market rate, that also would have been a quick conversation. Instead, this thing is dragging out.
As far as a timeline goes, here’s what Schefter said he expects:
My guess is that it’ll be decided this week, at some point in time. I don’t know exactly when. But for the sake of everybody involved, everyone needs to know and move on with their lives in whatever way that is.
Schefter said that he doesn’t expect other coaching jobs to be filled before there’s clarity on the LaFleur situation, outside of a potential hiring of John Harbaugh, currently the belle of the ball. So there goes the idea of a...
