The Packers’ season ended when they blew a 21-3 lead in the second half of a playoff loss to the Bears and that collapse mirrored the way they finished out the regular season.
After starting the year 9-3-1, the Packers lost their final four games to head into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed. During a press conference on Wednesday, General Manager Brian Gutekunst said he “thought we had an opportunity to kind of round into form there in the second half of the season” and that addressing the failure to do so after stronger finishes earlier in head coach Matt LaFleur’s run in Green Bay.
“In Matt’s first five years, we were 25-8 in December and January,” Gutekunst said, via the team’s website. “I think we’re 3-9 the last two years, so we’re looking at that from a lot of different angles, to make sure that we’re playing our best football in December and January. We’ve got to win the games that matter the most. That was a strength of ours prior to these last couple of years, was how we finished. We were playing our best football at the end of the season. We haven’t done that the last two years.”
The Packers were missing players like Micah Parsons, Tucker Kraft and Devonte Wyatt at the end of the year, but Gutekunst rejected that explanation for the downturn. He said the team had “everything we needed to win those football games,” so the focus is going to be on other factors for the disappointing finish.
