Gutekunst has put together a talented team. There’s no doubt about that.
The Packers were a hot Super Bowl pick heading into the 2024 season because they seemed young and hungry after Jordan Love’s first year as the starter. The first impressive thing from Green Bay’s 2023 season was that the post-Aaron Rodgers plan worked out. Love is likely not going to be the Packers’ third-straight Hall of Famer — with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers coming before him — but he’s certainly a competent NFL quarterback.
He had a down year in 2024 but still threw for 3,389 yards and 25 touchdowns (11 interceptions). That’s not great, but it’s also not terrible. If the stench of his three-interception performance against the Philadelphia Eagles wasn’t on him at the moment, it would be worth pointing out that he went seven straight games without an interception to end the regular season.
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Gutekunst also went out and made some big investments this past offseason. He paid Love, but he also dipped into free agency to bring in star running back Josh Jacobs and star safety Xavier McKinney. He paid well for both of those players, and they brought a ton of talent to Green Bay’s roster.
Throw in a new and aggressive defensive coordinator in Jeff Hafley — who stepped away from the Boston College head coaching gig for the opportunity to coach the Packers — and Green Bay had a lot cooking for them heading into this season.
They were a good team in 2024, with an 11-6 regular season record and a berth in the playoffs as the NFC’s seventh seed, but they weren’t a great team. They finished 0-6 against teams that finished with a record at least four games over .500 (including the playoff loss to the Eagles), and they went 1-5 against NFC North opponents.
“Good teams beat good teams. You can’t consider yourself to be one of those elite teams if you haven’t beat ’em. You know what I mean?”, rookie safety Javon Bullard said after the season ended, according to Kevin Patra of of NFL.com. “I feel like we’re a good team in this league, and our record shows we’re a good team in this league. But to be an elite team, you have to beat an elite team, and we ain’t do that.”
Brian Gutekunst wants the Packers to urgently chase another Super Bowl
Speaking to the media in his end-of-season news conference, Gutekunst also expressed some frustration, though it was on a big-picture scale.
Green Bay is known as “Title Town” and the champion of the NFL gets the Lombardi Trophy, named after legendary Packers head coach Vince Lombardi. The Packers have been good but not great in the LaFleur era, but every postseason that goes by ending in a loss takes them another season further away from 2010-11 when they won Super Bowl XLV against the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s always “championship or bust” in Green Bay, but Gutekunst suggested that the organization has perhaps lost some of that urgency as of late.
“You always have some disappointments in the year. I think, for me, the thing that’s been on my mind as we’ve concluded this season is we need to continue to ramp up our sense of urgency,” he said, per Eric Edholm of NFL.com. “These opportunities don’t come (very often). The life of a player in the National Football League is not very long. We’ve got a bunch of good guys in that locker room, got a bunch of talented guys in that locker room, and yeah, I think it’s time that we start competing for championships, right?”
He didn’t come right out and say it, but ultimately, Green Bay’s General Manager is telling LaFleur it’s time to kick this thing into high gear.
LaFleur, for all his flaws, is a good head coach. He leaves his sixth season as Green Bay’s head coach with a 67-33 overall record, which is good for a winning percentage of .670. That’s good, but it’s not great. To win a Super Bowl, you have to be great.
A sense of urgency is something that comes from the top down. Gutekunst has now done his part, but now it’s up to LaFleur to pass that on to the rest of the locker room and make sure that his players know that the expectations are sky-high heading into 2025.
The Packers have money to spend this offseason and they do have several young, foundational stars to build around, but playoff runs that don’t end in Super Bowls aren’t going to be tolerated for much longer if Gutekunst is to be believed.
