The Green Bay Packers laid a solid foundation in 2023 and will now be expected to soar to new heights in 2024 and beyond. But doing so begins with how this young team attacks the offseason.
“We’ve got to have a championship offseason,” said outside linebacker Preston Smith. “So everything rolls into the season because, at the end of the day, those games come back to following your training, trusting your technique and trusting everything you worked hard for this offseason.
“Coming into this next season, we’ve got to focus on the things that we can improve on, make sure that our weaknesses are our strengths, and we improve on the things we’re good at.”
Jordan Love was one of the best quarterbacks in football for the final two months of the season. The Packers have a litany of pass-catching options and a run game behind Aaron Jones and an offensive line that produced five straight 100-yard performances to close out the year.
Even defensively, with all the ups and downs that took place and uncertainty around Joe Barry’s future in those final weeks, this group finished the season playing some of its best football.
Along with all of that, the Packers have very few unrestricted free agents, especially on the offensive side of the ball. Their cap situation, while not great, is much improved over where it was this year, and they’ll have five picks in the top 100 of the 2024 draft.
Expectations are going to be sky-high for this Packers team in 2024, and that includes both inside the building and out.
“We’re coming with a purpose. We want to win it all. Feel like we could have did it this year. But next year, like I said, I’m very optimistic on that. We’ve got the guys in the building. We’ve got everything we need to get it done. We’ve set a good foundation this year. We just got to go win.”
However, while the Packers appear to be positioned well for a multi-year run where they will have the Super Bowl in their sights, Matt LaFleur also made clear that nothing is guaranteed either.
“I also re-iterated to them,” said LaFleur, “that just because we got to a certain spot doesn’t mean that’s guaranteed moving forward. 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. You’ve got to work at it, and you’ve got to put in a lot of hard work, you’ve got to have a great plan.”
I’m sure many thought that the 2010 Green Bay Packers were not only going to be back to another Super Bowl at some point, but also have a great opportunity to win another as well. But as we all know, neither of those things happened.
LaFleur said that each player will meet with their position coaches and be given one to two things to work on in the coming months. Then, hopefully, when the team reconvenes mid-April for OTAs, strides will have been made and other areas of emphasis can be given to them.
“A word that we used a lot in there was intentional,” said Josh Myers at his locker on Monday. “I think it has to be extremely intentional work. Picking out the flaws in your game and fixing those flaws and just making ourselves, healthy, strong, fast, and ready to go for next season.”
The players will have some time to decompress but then it’s time to get back to the grind, as LaFleur put it.
The Packers’ locker room on Monday was filled with emotion, knowing how close they were to playing this week in the NFC Championship. But there was also optimism about what lies ahead as well.
This young team overcame a lot this season. Things very easily could have spiraled out of control, but instead, this group continued to believe in each other and did what many considered to be unthinkable, in turning this season around and having the NFC’s top-seeded 49ers on the ropes.
Tremendous strides were made, but as we saw in that fourth quarter on Saturday, there is still work to be done to fully capitalize on what this Packers team established this season. And while the season just ended, that work begins now.
“Like I told the team,” added LaFleur, “you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. You’re never staying the same. I think the expectations are going to be higher.
“I think our standards that we’ve developed over the course of the year through our process, to how we practice, to how we go out and compete, I would expect them to continue to improve. I’d be disappointed if we didn’t get better.”
