Matt LaFleur‘s Packers seem to strive for good, but never great. They are not nearly aggressive enough and they too often take their foot all the way off the gas after seizing a lead. Even a soulless, agnostic NFL observer like me finds great pain in LaFleur’s approach. I feel for the cheeseheads among us.
- Points per game: 23 (16th)
- Total yards per game: 333 (15th)
- Plays per game: 59.4 (25th)
- Dropbacks per game: 35 (29th)
- Dropback EPA per play: 0.27 (2nd)
- Designed rush attempts per game: 27.3 (8th)
- Rush EPA per play: -0.07 (21st)
So, the question headed into 2026, LaFleur’s eighth season at the helm, will be whether the Packers are ready to operate like the ultra-aggressive, win-now, win-always Lions and Bears, coached by men for whom no lead is enough. That LaFleur plays these two throat-stepping teams twice a season every season has been a problem.
Pass Game
QB: Jordan Love, Tyrod Taylor
WR: Christian Watson, Savion Williams
WR: Jayden Reed, Bo Melton
WR: Matthew Golden, Skyy Moore
TE: Tucker Kraft, Luke Musgrave
LaFleur seems to have taken his players’ grades to heart. Last year LaFleur, after losing to the despised Bears in the Wild Card round, was given one of the NFL’s lowest player grades. Romeo Doubs appeared all too happy to hit the road for New England during free agency, and Dontayvion Wicks wasn’t exactly heartbroken to escape Green Bay for the Eagles.
LaFleur in late March acknowledged the organization-wide discontent and spoke to reporters about the issues plaguing his team.
“If I’m being honest about it, I think there were some guys that were upset about roles last year, and I think that took a toll on our football team,” LaFleur said. “You need guys that bring great energy every day. I think from a coaching standpoint, role clarity is key, so we’ve got to obviously do a better job communicating with our players, ‘Hey, here’s your role and if you’re unhappy about your role, it’s on you to do something about that, to carve out a role on this football team.’ But yeah, the buy-in is absolutely critical. Getting guys in there that are juiced and ready to go to work each and every day is gonna be critical for us.”
Later that same day, the immaculately-groomed Green Bay head coach dropped this little nugget, which — in one Rotoworld blogger’s opinion — has not received enough attention in real or fantasy football circles in the subsequent months.
LaFleur, orchestrator of one of the league’s most reliably efficient offenses, said the Packers would “strip everything down and start like it’s Year 1 all over again” in 2026. “I just think reinstalling and trying to go through — it might take a little bit more time — but really get into the details because that’s usually the separator.”
We could — if LaFleur was serious about starting again on offense — see a far more pass-heavy Packers offense this season. This would hinge on the team finally allowing Jordan Love to cook a year after he ranked second in EPA per drop back, trailing only Drake Maye.
Not everyone is sold on the idea of a major overhaul of the Green Bay offense. That includes Jason Hirschhorn, writer and analyst for The Leap, an excellent Packers-focused newsletter.
‘More Granular Focus’
“When LaFleur mentions going back to the start, I suspect he means in terms of instruction and installation of the offense rather than a complete rethink of what the system looks like and how it works,” Hirschhorn told me, adding that the team’s passing offense has “lacked detail” in recent seasons. “Like most of the Kyle Shanahan-influenced schemes in the NFL, mastering the little nuances unlocks everything (marrying run and pass concepts so they present identically to the defense before the snap, syncing up timing between route depth and a QB’s dropback, and so forth). These are the details that, at least in my reading of LaFleur’s words, the Packers believe will need a more granular focus akin to a Year 1 install.”
A massively pass-heavy Packers offense, Hirschhorn said, “seems unlikely,” even if LaFleur lightens up on the early down rushing.
“While we’ve seen the Packers throw at higher rates in stretches here and there over the past few seasons, the higher neutral pass frequencies from early in LaFleur’s tenure appear more tied to Aaron Rodgers’ preferences than the coach’s,” Hirschhorn said.
You should know how run-first the Green Bay offense has been over the past two seasons: In 2025 they ranked 25th in pass rate over expected, going over their expected pass rate in just six games. In 2024 the Packers were 30th in pass rate over expected; they were on the plus side of PROE in a mere five games. Since the start of the 2024 season, only the Ravens have a lower neutral pass rate than LaFleur’s Packers.
Green Bay has been one of the few teams that refuses to stop running the ball even when facing a deficit. Their commitment to the run has been total.
A balanced or even (slightly) pass-first Packers offense would generate a lot more drop backs and pass attempts and, of course, targets for the Green Bay pass catchers. This would be the case even if the Packers remain one of the NFL’s slowest offensive units.
- In 2025, Green Bay averaged 27.5 seconds per snap, the ninth slowest mark in the league.
- Only six offenses have played at a slower pace since the start of the 2024 season.
- The Packers averaged 62 plays per game since the start of 2024; only the Panthers have averaged fewer plays per game.
For context, the fast-paced Dallas offense has averaged 153 more passing attempts per season since the start of 2024. This means, for fantasy purposes, Jordan Love is a borderline 12-team league starter unless he is wildly efficient in a given week. There is (almost) no room for error.
Only three QBs have a better adjusted yards per attempt than Love over the past two seasons. With a rethought Packers offense, I think Love — who last year averaged .50 fantasy points per drop back, the same as Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff — could easily be a top 10 weekly fantasy play. Love’s QB19 average draft position is going to look quite silly come the fall.
Christian Watson, meanwhile, should have every shot to be Love’s WR1 in 2026. With a spike in route rate and more drop backs, Watson won’t have to be ridiculously efficient to get by for fantasy purposes.
LOUD NOISES#ProBowlVote + Christian Watson#ProBowlVote + Jordan Love
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) November 27, 2025
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/RsE5bxi3HA
Watson in 2025 sported an air yards profile that was nothing short of tremendous: From Week 8 to 18, only five players racked up more air yards than Watson, who saw a gaudy 37 percent of the Packers’ air yards over the span. He did all this with a route participation rate of less than 70 percent. Doubs’ exit could get Watson to something closer to 80 percent of the team’s routes. That, I think, would offer something in the range of top 12 upside for the rangy downfield threat — if he can manage to avoid the gaze of the Injury Reaper for once.
Jayden Reed’s 2025 season was derailed early on by a nagging foot issue and a broken clavicle. He never truly recovered. Like Watson, Reed was reduced to something resembling a part-time player in the season’s final month, running 65 percent of the team’s routes and seeing a target on a ho-hum 18 percent of those routes. In a run-first offense, that won’t cut it in any fantasy format.
Reed has a history of decent target earning. The slippery slot man saw a target on 22 percent of his pass routes in 2024, and 25 percent in 2023, before LaFleur committed fully to the wideout rotation bit (utility player Bo Melton led the Packers in targets per route that season). Reed was top 15 in yards per route from the slot in both 2023 and 2024. He has been a solidly efficient slot guy; it’s only a matter of more routes and more pass attempts for his offense.
Matthew Golden, who came into the league with a quietly abysmal analytical profile that mostly boiled down to Fast Guy Run Fast, was predictably bad in his 2025 rookie season. He finished fifth on the team in receptions — behind the departed Wicks, who is better than Golden — and fifth in receiving yards. His 17 percent air yards share was … rather bad.
Packers coaches, however, have taken every opportunity this offseason to heap praise on the second-year wideout. They need him to be good, or at least passably good, after burning a first rounder on him in 2025. The team, according to beat writers, is “clearing the way” for Golden in 2026. If offseason practices are any indication, Golden will be locked into two-receiver sets alongside Watson, while Reed mans the slot. A rough start to the regular season could change this calculation.
Before his ugly season-ending knee injury last season, Tucker Kraft was Kittling the league almost every week in the Packers’ massively run-heavy system. With startlingly regular big plays, Kraft ranked second in tight end yards per route run over the season’s first half, trailing only the uber-efficient but always-disappointing Dalton Kincaid. Kraft’s 2025 yards after the catch per reception (11.3) didn’t just lead tight ends. It led all receivers too. Assuming full health, Kraft is set to be a main beneficiary of the Packers’ rethinking of their offensive approach this year.
Run Game
RB: Josh Jacobs, MarShawn Lloyd, Chris Brooks
OL (L-R): Jordan Morgan, Aaron Banks, Sean Rhyan, Anthony Belton, Zach Tom
Josh Jacobs is in potentially serious legal trouble. In late May he was arrested by local police and booked in jail for battery, criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct, strangulation and suffocation, and intimidation of a victim. Jacobs, 28, has denied the allegations and participated in Green Bay’s OTAs in June.
While we don’t know if or when the NFL will take action against Jacobs — or if his his legal situation will resolve before September — there remains a possibility he will miss some or all of the 2026 season.
That the Packers offense has been predicated on force feeding Jacobs means it would be an outsized loss for LaFleur’s run-based offense. It’s not a particularly good rushing attack because Jacobs is not particularly good. He’s sturdy and he will get what’s blocked and perhaps a little bit more. The Jacobs-centric Packers run game averaged 0.13 missed tackles forced per carry in 2025, one of the NFL’s lowest rates. They ranked 20th in yards after contact per rush, in line with the Chargers and Panthers. Twenty teams had a better EPA per rush.
Even so, Jacobs will remain one of the safest weekly running back bets in fantasy if he finds his way onto the playing field in 2026. If he doesn’t — if Jacobs faces consequences for the allegations against him — no one should assume MarShawn Lloyd would be the next guy up in the Green Bay backfield.
The oft-injury Lloyd has dealt with calf, hamstring, ankle, groin, and leg injuries over his first two NFL seasons. Having missed the entirety of 2025, Lloyd has six carries since being drafted in 2024.
“Even if Lloyd has overcome his soft-tissue injuries — and nobody should make that assumption at this point in the process — that doesn’t necessarily mean he could take over as the lead back if needed,” Hirschhorn said. “Over his college career, he never registered more than 129 touches in a season or 14.3 per game.”
LaFleur has told Packers beat writers that Lloyd “still needs to learn how to practice,” according to Hirschhorn.
Jacobs, meanwhile, averaged nearly 20 touches per game in 2025. Only four backs in the NFL have more expected rushing fantasy points over the past two seasons. He has been a workhorse in an age of split backfields.
Don’t be surprised if the Packers acquire backfield help ahead of the regular season if Jacobs’ legal problems lead to a suspension. This could include James Conner, a reliable between-the-tackles guy who appears to be expendable in Arizona.
I would be more apt to take Brooks as a bench stash if Jacobs is set to miss playing time. Brooks has flashed here and there and Lloyd probably isn’t good because he’s never been good. Whoever gets lead back duties for Green Bay is going to have every chance to be a top-12 weekly play.
Green Bay Packers Win Total
DraftKings Over/Under: 9.5
Pick: Under (+115)
With the third toughest strength of schedule in one of the most difficult divisions in the NFL, I’ll side with the Under on 9.5 wins for LaFleur’s team in 2026. The Packers last season were kind of lucky too, logging the third most fumbles (18) and the fourth highest fumble recover rate (66.7 percent). They ran hot on third downs too, a metric that’s bound to regress, at least a little.
This is mostly a see-it-before-I-believe it thing. LaFleur has to show he’s willing to do what it takes to close out games, to stay aggressive, and to not toy around with inferior opponents like they did a few times in 2025. Love and the offense should be slightly less boring for fantasy purposes while the Packers fight for a Wild Card spot.
