I\u2019m speechless<\/a>,\u201d LaFleur told Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com via text message. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have to do that, but he did. [It\u2019s] one of the nicest compliments [of] my life. I\u2019m so appreciative of him for that.\u201d<\/p>\nLaFleur coaches Rodgers for four seasons in Green Bay, guiding him to a pair of league MVP awards. By the time Rodgers was traded to the Jets in 2023, the relationship between LaFleur and Rodgers was strained, at best.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, this league has changed a lot in my 21 years,\u201d Rodgers told reporters on Monday night. \u201cYou know, when you hear a conversation about the Mike Tomlins of the world, Matt LaFleurs of the world, those are just two that I played for, and when I first got in the league, there wouldn\u2019t be conversation about whether those guys were on the \u2018hot seat,\u2019 you know, but the way that the league is covered now and the way that there\u2019s snap decisions and the validity given to the, you know, the Twitter experts and all the, you know, experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they\u2019re talking about, to me that\u2019s an absolute joke.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd for either of those two guys to be on the hot seat is really apropos of where we\u2019re at as a society and a league, because obviously Matt\u2019s done a lot of great things in Green Bay, and we had a lot of success. Mike T, he\u2019s had more success than damn near anybody in the league, you know, for the last 19, 20 years. And more than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture\u2019s right, you don\u2019t think about making a change. But there\u2019s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside, and obviously that sways decisions from time to time, but it\u2019s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reality is simple. The beast that has helped Rodgers make nearly $400 million during his career has created an appetite for non-stop coverage, reporting, and analysis. And fans of the bad teams expect them to try to change. If owners feel compelled to make changes in order to keep making the kind of money needed to pay the salaries of players like Rodgers, that\u2019s their decision.<\/p>\n
Folks in the media are merely trying to figure out not where the pink slips are but where the pink slips are going. Owners who think it\u2019s ridiculous for their coaches to be regarded as being in jeopardy by those paid to cover the league can issue a statement to the contrary, if they want.<\/p>\n
In Green Bay, June comments from new Packers CEO Ed Policy created the impression that 2025 would be an up-or-out year for LaFleur. Even now, three days after a postseason collapse against the Bears, the Packers have not said that LaFleur definitely will be back for 2026.<\/p>\n
As to Tomlin, the prevailing view by the time the playoffs rolled around was that Tomlin wouldn\u2019t be fired, and that he\u2019d be gone only if he chose to be. (Which is exactly what happened.)<\/p>\n
Rodgers\u2019s take was, frankly, erroneous. It\u2019s not the media\u2019s fault that coaches are viewed to be on the hot seat. It\u2019s our job to try to figure out where the inevitable openings (so far this year, nine of 32) will be. And if the NFL\u2019s owners are sufficiently wishy-washy to make firing decisions based on comments from \u201cTwitter experts and all the experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they\u2019re talking about,\u201d that\u2019s the thing Rodgers should be whining about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During a post-game press conference following Monday night\u2019s playoff loss to the Texans, Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":514617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-514616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115891376354901817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}