Entering the official start of training camp Wednesday, Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur has the sixth-best odds to be the NFL’s Coach of the Year in 2023, per BetMGM. At +1800, LaFleur trails Detroit’s Dan Campbell, Denver’s Sean Payton, Chicago’s Matt Eberflus, Atlanta’s Arthur Smith and New York’s Robert Saleh.
The odds help highlight LaFleur’s opportunity. Despite winning 13 games during each of his first three seasons as the Packers coach, LaFleur never received the Coach of the Year postseason recognition. For most voters, the reason was likely easy to ascertain: LaFleur inherited Aaron Rodgers, a future Hall of Famer at the game’s most important position.
Now, obviously, the situation is much different. The Packers are coming off a losing season. Rodgers is in New York. The roster is young. Unlike 2019, there were no big free-agent additions to spark a revival. In 2023, the success and failure of the Green Bay Packers falls so squarely on LaFleur and his ability to maximize what he has in terms of personnel, especially on offense.
His candidacy as a top “Coach of the Year” candidate will be difficult to ignore if the Packers are successful in 2023.
Jordan Love, the Packers’ hand-picked successor at quarterback, is getting his opportunity as a starter. The success or failure of Love will be a direct reflection of both his last three years of development under LaFleur and LaFleur’s ability to manage and help a first-year starting quarterback in his system.
In terms of the roster, the Packers saw many established veterans leave Green Bay during the offseason, including Rodgers, Mason Crosby, Marcedes Lewis, Adrian Amos and Allen Lazard. LaFleur’s team is young at key spots, and he knows it. Maybe Brian Gutekunst added a quality contributor in a free-agent signing like Tarvarius Moore or Jonathan Owens, but there is no addition like Za’Darius Smith or Preston Smith to ignite the roster in 2023. This is all to say that LaFleur must find a way to get much more out of a team that is far less experienced than the one that won only eight games in 2022.
Because of the quarterback situation and the state of the roster coming off of last year, few outsiders believe the Packers are contenders in the NFC North. But the division lacks a dominant team and appears wide open, giving the Packers a real opportunity to surprise after finishing third in 2022.
So, what if Love is good and the Packers come alive with a young roster and win the NFC North? Well, it would be nothing short of LaFleur’s best coaching job to date, and he’d become an excellent candidate for NFL Coach of the Year, an award that so often goes to an unexpectedly good team lacking a top quarterback.
LaFleur almost certainly doesn’t care about the award and is singuarly focused on making the 2023 Green Bay Packers the best football team it can be, but this year is an incredible opportunity for him to win NFL Coach of the Year. He’s leading a monumental transition at quarterback. He must maximize a young roster. Expectations are low. Potential is high. Can LaFleur put all the pieces together and open a new contending window for the Packers in Year 1 of the post-Rodgers era? If the answer is yes, he’ll cement himself as one of the league’s top coaches while also giving himself a terrific chance to win an award he probably deserved long before 2023.
