Packers football leadership poll

[JosephC]

Thought this would make an interesting poll.  I have never set up a poll before in this forum, so if it all looks kind of botched...oh well.....

[SeaBass]

I would retain Gute. But if he gets fired so be it, I can be on board with a new guy. I just hope they pick someone with a different philosophy because the thing about Gute I'm not fond of is the Ted Thompson way of filling the special teams with bottom of roster nobodies that can't function like special teams should be able to function. Maybe it's weird that is the gripe I have but there it is.

[LouisEly]

I would think that if MLF got fired, somebody would hire him fairly quickly.  I don't know who has openings, but I would think one of the Raiders, Jets, Giants, Browns, Titans, Cardinals, etc., would be happy to have his success after years of franchise futility.

Given that, I'd hope that a trade of MLF to one of those franchises for a 2nd round pick would be an option.  Particularly whoever signs Malik Willis.  Same with Gutey if they want him too.

I wouldn't fire them simply because I think they have some type of trade value.

[OldHeidelberg]

12 hours ago, LouisEly said:

I would think that if MLF got fired, somebody would hire him fairly quickly.  I don't know who has openings, but I would think one of the Raiders, Jets, Giants, Browns, Titans, Cardinals, etc., would be happy to have his success after years of franchise futility.

Given that, I'd hope that a trade of MLF to one of those franchises for a 2nd round pick would be an option.  Particularly whoever signs Malik Willis.  Same with Gutey if they want him too.

I wouldn't fire them simply because I think they have some type of trade value.

The problem is I would think they have to spend a couple of weeks working out that trade before they can hire a new coach. I could see it happening if MLF refuses their final extension offer to give them reason and then things could move quick with a team like Atlanta. I think we will find out a lot today one way or the other. 

[Team Canada]

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47589054/sources-packers-matt-lafleur-expected-try-reach-extension

Extension incoming...

[DR28]

6 minutes ago, Team Canada said:

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47589054/sources-packers-matt-lafleur-expected-try-reach-extension

Extension incoming...

What a ******* joke, come on Policy.... How the hell can offer an extension to pretty boy when the season ended the way it did???

MLF isn't going to change in years 8-10. Time to move on.

Give us Kevin Stefanski.

[adambr2]

I for one am super excited about Ben Johnson bending over our beta male head coach 2 more times next year followed by screaming “F the Packers!!” in his locker room. 

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I would really like if someone out there did some quant on Gute because I think people would be surprised to see where he lands as far as drafting goes. I think he's probably better than most but maybe I'm wrong. All teams have flop picks, his get magnified here obviously. Prior to this past offseason, it felt like he generally crushed in FA too. He flopped big time this past year though. Parsons made up for what would have really made him look bad. Golden looks like a solid player and LaFleur looks like an idiot for wasting him.

I voted to keep him and fire MLF. I am just not convinced there is a big issue with Gute or a guy that you know can come in and do better the way that I am with MLF. 

[JosephC]

I think Gutekunst would grade out as good to well-above-average (in terms of the draft only), but that would largely be due to the 2022 class which was pretty remarkable.  Q. Walker (not great but a legit starter), Wyatt, Watson, Rhyan (again, not great but has started), Doubs, Tom, Enagbare, R. Walker is like 2 1/2 quality drafts stuck into 1.

However, 2018 was Alexander who was very good early and Valdes-Scantling who has a role but is not a great player.  Not much else.

2019 is Gary who is great when he wants to be but is near worthless when he doesn't want to be (which is about half the time), a really over-rated Savage and Jenkins who was excellent for a second round pick.  Not much else to see here.

2020 was Love.  Runyan is a marginal starter, good for a B-level team but a guy who a team will always be looking for an upgrade for.  AJ Dillion was good in his role early but didn't last that long.

2021 draft was pretty much a disaster.  First three picks were Stokes, Myers and Rodgers and none of them worked out.  They got a left tackle in Van Lanen but didn't realize what they had.  Slaton is a nose tackle that will give you a solid, honest days work.  McDuffie is alright for what he is, getting a guy like him with pick #220 is definitely a good pick.

2023 first two picks don't look good (Van Ness and Musgrave).  Jayden Reed and Tucker Kraft are hits.  Wooden, Wicks, Brooks, Valentine...may not be great but they all have roles.  Even if you hate Valentine, he was a #232 pick.  Wooden may not be great but he was a real god-send for the Packers.

I'd argue the last two drafts are still probably too early to tell.  Cooper and Williams likely to remain good players.  IMO, can't really even judge guys like Jordan Morgan and Matthew Golden yet. 

I'm guessing, if you take out the 2022 class, that the rest of it would grade out as being pretty average.  Including the 2022 class, somewhere in the good to well-above-average area.

[Joseph Zarr]

I am emotionally uninvested in the outcome. I expect them to resign MLF and keep both he and Gute in the fold. Will I be upset? Not really. They have an organization they are running and surely have a much better pulse on what goes on within the hallowed walls. Surely the means by which the Packers have penny pinched with coaching hires needs to be reckoned with. I fully anticipate they will replace assistants - ST and OL at the front of that line. Surely they will look at underperforming players as well. The fact of the matter is: OL blocks in 2nd half it is a different story today. McManus doesn't have the worst game of his career surely this is a different story today. Reed and Watson manage to come up with ONE of those catchable balls surely it's a different story today. I don't know how much of any of that comes on the HC who seems to be universally respected across the League. The Packers seem to be a big convoluted mess of their own making. BUT, they also are making money every year hand over fist. I imagine they are quite aware of this and realize disrupting what is already a pretty successful football operation could jeopardize that - even if they continually find improbable ways to lose important games. They can keep telling themselves that can change and maybe it can.

[SeaBass]

I've already said I'd keep Gute and that's still true for me. I do want them to move on from MLF.

I can, however, see a way they'd keep him and it would be relatively ok. I think this was a pretty good football team this season and yeah I'm going to use injuries as the excuse for why they fell off a cliff the last 5 games. They held leads they didn't keep, that's ugly but they also have the ability to play well enough to build those leads. There was a clear drop off in defensive quality with all the injuries to key players. There were also problems with the defense when their key players were healthy.

I can see a path to success by running it back with Gute and MLF, improving the roster and somehow cleaning up the horrid gaffes that happened over and over. I just hope it works because I also see a path where the same things keep going wrong.

[adambr2]

10 minutes ago, Joseph Zarr said:

I am emotionally uninvested in the outcome. I expect them to resign MLF and keep both he and Gute in the fold. Will I be upset? Not really. They have an organization they are running and surely have a much better pulse on what goes on within the hallowed walls. Surely the means by which the Packers have penny pinched with coaching hires needs to be reckoned with. I fully anticipate they will replace assistants - ST and OL at the front of that line. Surely they will look at underperforming players as well. The fact of the matter is: OL blocks in 2nd half it is a different story today. McManus doesn't have the worst game of his career surely this is a different story today. Reed and Watson manage to come up with ONE of those catchable balls surely it's a different story today. I don't know how much of any of that comes on the HC who seems to be universally respected across the League. The Packers seem to be a big convoluted mess of their own making. BUT, they also are making money every year hand over fist. I imagine they are quite aware of this and realize disrupting what is already a pretty successful football operation could jeopardize that - even if they continually find improbable ways to lose important games. They can keep telling themselves that can change and maybe it can.

We do this every time the Packers blow a big one.

”if only Doubs had recovered it”

”if only McManus hadn’t had an awful game”

”if he had caught this. If he had caught that”

Ok, it works the other way too. What if Watsons’ fumble had gone out of the back of the endzone? What if we hadn’t recovered Jacobs’ fumble? What if Kinnard had coughed it up deep in our territory when he put the ball on the ground? What if we just “took the points” on 4th and goal from the 1 like many wanted to? What if Ben Johnson had actually punted a few times instead of coughing it up deep in his territory?

Lady Luck actually tried her damndest to help us out for once and we STILL choked.

The common denominator is the choke and the coach. I suspect a year from now we will be lamenting other “if only!” outcomes, only with different details.

[Sixtolezcano]

17 hours ago, LouisEly said:

I would think that if MLF got fired, somebody would hire him fairly quickly.  I don't know who has openings, but I would think one of the Raiders, Jets, Giants, Browns, Titans, Cardinals, etc., would be happy to have his success after years of franchise futility.

Given that, I'd hope that a trade of MLF to one of those franchises for a 2nd round pick would be an option.  Particularly whoever signs Malik Willis.  Same with Gutey if they want him too.

I wouldn't fire them simply because I think they have some type of trade value.

A trade will never happen, it’s rarer that an albatross (or a condor, -4 under) is in golf (8x in the past 56 years).

[Joseph Zarr]

17 minutes ago, adambr2 said:

We do this every time the Packers blow a big one.

”if only Doubs had recovered it”

”if only McManus hadn’t had an awful game”

”if he had caught this. If he had caught that”

Ok, it works the other way too. What if Watsons’ fumble had gone out of the back of the endzone? What if we hadn’t recovered Jacobs’ fumble? What if Kinnard had coughed it up deep in our territory when he put the ball on the ground? What if we just “took the points” on 4th and goal from the 1 like many wanted to? What if Ben Johnson had actually punted a few times instead of coughing it up deep in his territory?

Lady Luck actually tried her damndest to help us out for once and we STILL choked.

The common denominator is the choke and the coach. I suspect a year from now we will be lamenting other “if only!” outcomes, only with different details.

I don't deny any of what you say. I agree they have repeatedly choked under the brightest lights as a team under LaFleur. Do I think LaFleur has personally also failed enough in these big moments for the Packers to move on? Absolutely yes. I just don't think they care about this or see this remotely like we fans do and the team's leaders love Him. I also just don't care nearly as much about the packers as I did when I was younger. If they retain him I hope they do enough organizationally to change some of these repeated and consistent issues that have plagued them seemingly all seven years. Do I think they do? Not really. BUT, they are a business organization. The current formula is satiating their profit bottom line.

[LouisEly]

14 minutes ago, Sixtolezcano said:

A trade will never happen, it’s rarer that an albatross (or a condor, -4 under) is in golf (8x in the past 56 years).

A head coach who presided over a deliberate attempt to injure other players was traded for a 1st and a 3rd round pick.  In 15 years he only led a team to one Super Bowl.

[HarryDoyle]

5 hours ago, adambr2 said:

I for one am super excited about Ben Johnson bending over our beta male head coach 2 more times next year followed by screaming “F the Packers!!” in his locker room. 

The proverbial schoolyard bully pantsing the bespectacled straight A student on the playground and then taking his lunch money. 

I am so disappointed in Policy. I can't believe someone who came from the loins of someone who oversaw the operations of one of the greatest dynasties in NFL history would do this. At best, this team will spin its wheels in neutral as a fringe playoff team. At worst, this is the first step back to the 70s and 80s. The team has taken on the personality of its coach as a passive, soft and mentally weak team that squats and pees like a submissive dog at the first sign of adversity, with four losses and one tie in games where they held a two score lead, and in the case of this past Saturday, three scores. For the first time since the Infante era, I will have no expectations of real success for the near future, which will do my blood pressure good. But hey, as long as the Ariens Sledding Hill and Johnsonville Brat House are still cash flow positive, no need to rock the boat.

[adambr2]

4 hours ago, SeaBass said:

I've already said I'd keep Gute and that's still true for me. I do want them to move on from MLF.

I can, however, see a way they'd keep him and it would be relatively ok. I think this was a pretty good football team this season and yeah I'm going to use injuries as the excuse for why they fell off a cliff the last 5 games. They held leads they didn't keep, that's ugly but they also have the ability to play well enough to build those leads. There was a clear drop off in defensive quality with all the injuries to key players. There were also problems with the defense when their key players were healthy.

I can see a path to success by running it back with Gute and MLF, improving the roster and somehow cleaning up the horrid gaffes that happened over and over. I just hope it works because I also see a path where the same things keep going wrong.

I can wrap my head around keeping Gute. I don’t think he’s great and his first few years were really bad but it seems like after 2021 it’s been solidly above average. Struck out in free agency last year but did well the year before.

JJ Watt’s recent comments bother me a lot though, about how he wanted to play for the Packers and would have come for 1 year/$5M and they were just not interested. That feels criminal of Gute.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

5 hours ago, adambr2 said:

We do this every time the Packers blow a big one.

”if only Doubs had recovered it”

”if only McManus hadn’t had an awful game”

”if he had caught this. If he had caught that”

Ok, it works the other way too. What if Watsons’ fumble had gone out of the back of the endzone? What if we hadn’t recovered Jacobs’ fumble? What if Kinnard had coughed it up deep in our territory when he put the ball on the ground? What if we just “took the points” on 4th and goal from the 1 like many wanted to? What if Ben Johnson had actually punted a few times instead of coughing it up deep in his territory?

Lady Luck actually tried her damndest to help us out for once and we STILL choked.

The common denominator is the choke and the coach. I suspect a year from now we will be lamenting other “if only!” outcomes, only with different details.

Yeah... We had a looooot go our way in that game. It made it that much worse. We dodged a lot of the typical Packerisms and it was like it wasn't enough, we had to keep going to the well until we were sure we lost. 

The more I think about it, retaining MLF is emblematic of a lot about this team. It's a fair assessment that firing him is risky. But it is so apparent to me they absolutely won't win it with him. Keeping him on is essentially saying "We'll make the playoffs, and I like our chances to win a game there, sure we are likely to melt down in humiliating fashion but we won't finish 7-10." They are afraid to get it wrong and have a losing season that makes them look bad. They're afraid to be vulnerable and really go for it, so they are, like usual, opting for the safe path with the smallest reward. 

[adambr2]

13 minutes ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

Yeah... We had a looooot go our way in that game. It made it that much worse. We dodged a lot of the typical Packerisms and it was like it wasn't enough, we had to keep going to the well until we were sure we lost. 

The more I think about it, retaining MLF is emblematic of a lot about this team. It's a fair assessment that firing him is risky. But it is so apparent to me they absolutely won't win it with him. Keeping him on is essentially saying "We'll make the playoffs, and I like our chances to win a game there, sure we are likely to melt down in humiliating fashion but we won't finish 7-10." They are afraid to get it wrong and have a losing season that makes them look bad. They're afraid to be vulnerable and really go for it, so they are, like usual, opting for the safe path with the smallest reward. 

If the Packers were a human being, they would work 9-5 at a job that they hated for 40 years, constantly believing they were in line for the next big promotion that went to someone else every time, rather than risk chasing something bigger.

“It pays the bills”, they’d say with a weak smile to anyone who asked.

[HarryDoyle]

1 hour ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

Yeah... We had a looooot go our way in that game. It made it that much worse. We dodged a lot of the typical Packerisms and it was like it wasn't enough, we had to keep going to the well until we were sure we lost. 

The more I think about it, retaining MLF is emblematic of a lot about this team. It's a fair assessment that firing him is risky. But it is so apparent to me they absolutely won't win it with him. Keeping him on is essentially saying "We'll make the playoffs, and I like our chances to win a game there, sure we are likely to melt down in humiliating fashion but we won't finish 7-10." They are afraid to get it wrong and have a losing season that makes them look bad. They're afraid to be vulnerable and really go for it, so they are, like usual, opting for the safe path with the smallest reward. 

I call this Milwaukee Brewers Syndrome, but at least they have the excuse that they can't financially compete with teams like the Dodgers and Yankees because of no salary cap. But I agree they have to take the risk of going with someone else. In this case, the devil you know is not better than the devil you don't know. 

[OldSchoolSnapper]

At least the take that the negotiating is a ruse is gaining steam and actually being floated as a possibility, so I can still dream that this loser isn't coaching my favorite team next year. 

[OldHeidelberg]

10 hours ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

At least the take that the negotiating is a ruse is gaining steam and actually being floated as a possibility, so I can still dream that this loser isn't coaching my favorite team next year. 

The longer it takes the more that seems likely, If reports are to be believed they were trying to give him an extension before but he didn't like the offer and nothing has changed except he is really unpopular right now. I would put my money on a 1 year extension but I do think it is possible they are taking a few days to get him moved to Atlanta or Miami.    

[Sixtolezcano]

18 hours ago, LouisEly said:

A head coach who presided over a deliberate attempt to injure other players was traded for a 1st and a 3rd round pick.  In 15 years he only led a team to one Super Bowl.

Only one Super Bowl? I’ll take that. 

[Sixtolezcano]

Trade MLF for Tomlin. We fix our defense and the Steelers have an offensive HC(cough…cough).

 

[OldSchoolSnapper]

6 minutes ago, Sixtolezcano said:

Trade MLF for Tomlin. We fix our defense and the Steelers have an offensive HC(cough…cough).

 

That's gonna be a no from me, dawg.