Live look at Matt LaFleur at 1265 yesterday:
You know how, as an adult, every once in a while you wake up determined to resolve all of the issues that have been bothering you in one fell swoop? Respond to some emails, clean up your desk, throw out all of the expired food in your fridge? I’ve never experienced it myself, but it sounds wild.
Well that’s the kind of day Matt LaFleur had at 1265 on Wednesday. The top complaints from Packer fans for the last few seasons:
- Joe Barry
- Strength and Conditioning Coach
- Kicker
- Bloggers who think they’re funnier than they are
- Joe Barry
Not much you can do about #4, but he took care of #1, #2, #3, and #5 in the span of about 4 hours on Wednesday.
Look I’ll be honest, I thought Joe Barry had saved his job with the defense’s performance at the end of season. But when you look over his entire three-year run as the DC, they just weren’t very good. There were definitely some bright spots (the 2021-22 Divisional Round game against the Niner at Lambeau*), but overall it was a LOT more bad than good. By all accounts, Joe Barry was a top-notch human and well liked in the locker room. Unfortunately for him though, empathy doesn’t stop Christian McCaffery from scoring go-ahead touchdowns in big moments of playoff games.
Where they go from Barry, I’m not sure. Vrabel’s name is out there (I’d be surprised if he goes back to being just a coordinator), Jimmy Leonhard’s name is surfacing again, I’ve heard Rex Ryan’s name thrown out there. It will be an interesting process to monitor, that’s for sure. LaFleur needs to get this one right. Jordan Love looks like the next great QB in Packer history, he’s just starting the prime of his career, let’s not waste these years like we did with so many of the Aaron Rodgers years on a porous defense.
LaFleur wasn’t done after the Joe Barry move yesterday. With all of the soft tissue injuries that have plagued the Packers for many years, he also decided to move on from Strength and Conditioning Coach, Chris Gizzi. Now there is no one who knows less about strength and conditioning than a blogger/podcaster, but it did feel like the team had a LOT of nagging injuries over the last few seasons. The part of this move that really hurts, though, is that he had to fire this guy:
That’s Chris Gizzi, storming out of the Lambeau Field tunnel during the first Monday Night Football broadcast after 9/11. Bummer they had to move on from a guy who left such an indelible image on that night.
The last move the team made on Wednesday was to bring in a kicker to compete with Anders Carlson. They signed former Georgia kicker, Jack Podlesny. He signed as an undrafted free agent with the Vikings but was cut before the season. Over three seasons at Georgia he connected on 83% of his field goal attempts, which is a hell of a lot better than Carlson’s 70% at Auburn. We call that #analytics. Not sure if he makes it to camp or not, but the move at least signals to fans that the front office realizes they have an issue at kicker.
Now THAT is a good day of work at Lambeau. I would imagine we’ll have a new DC before the Super Bowl, then we’ll see if Brian Gutekunst can stay on a heater in the draft in April.
*I’ve gone through the archives, you can build a pretty convincing case that that game was the single best defensive performance in a playoff game in the entire Aaron Rodgers Era. The NFC Championship Game in 2010 would be #1B or #2.
PS: I don’t think Joe Prunty fixed EVERYTHING with the Bucks in the span of 18 hours, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t look better last night against the Cavs. The schemes were more connected, the team had better energy, just a professional effort. Which has been missing. PRUNTDAWG!
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