The Packers didn’t just lose on Sunday. They handed Minnesota the kind of opening that turns a manageable game into a full-blown mess.
Green Bay led 22-10, then watched the Vikings storm back for a 39-22 win. The turning point came in the fourth quarter, when Minnesota’s go-ahead drive kept getting extended by Packers penalties and nearly got buried before the defense bailed it out. Instead, the Vikings escaped, took the lead and never let it go.
Carson Wentz wasn’t sharp, but he didn’t need to be perfect. The Packers kept giving him extra cracks at it.
An illegal contact penalty on third-and-11 stopped Green Bay from getting off the field in Minnesota territory. Three plays later, a roughing-the-passer flag moved the Vikings deeper into Packers land.
Then, after Wentz threw what looked like a drive-killing interception in the end zone, a defensive holding call on contact with T.J. Hockenson gave Minnesota new life.
The next snap finished the job.
The drive also included two apparent facemask penalties that went uncalled.
For Matt LaFleur, it was another gut punch in a season that is barely underway. He got a contract extension after last season despite questions about his future, but Sunday’s collapse only turns up the heat. The Packers are now carrying the same ugly storyline they tried to leave behind: they can’t finish games.
That problem has been piling up fast. Green Bay has blown a double-digit lead in three of its last five games, including the playoffs.
Last season’s late-season collapse against the Bears set off the alarm bells, and the wild-card loss to Chicago was even worse. The Packers also lost a 10-point lead against the Bears in Week 16 after leading 16-6 with less than five minutes left.
After Sunday’s defeat, LaFleur didn’t duck the issue. “It’s gonna be a topic of conversation for all you guys until we do it," he told reporters.
The bigger picture is even uglier: the Packers have lost six straight games, including the playoffs, dating back to 2025, their longest losing streak since 1990-91. Four of those losses came after Green Bay had a second-half lead of more than one score, including losses at Denver and at Chicago in Week 16, along with the wild-card game at Chicago.
A 12-point lead doesn’t always feel fatal. But when it disappears the way this one did - with 29 unanswered points and a defense helping Minnesota along at every turn - it becomes part of a much bigger problem in Green Bay.
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The Packers Week 1 loss to the Vikings did more than spoil the start of the 2026 season. After Green Bay surrendered a late lead in Minneapolis, the conversation around Matt LaFleur shifted fast from frustration to something bigger, because it fit an uncomfortable pattern that has followed this team through too many finishes. When a game slips away like that, fans do not just ask what went wrong in the fourth quarter - they start wondering whether the bigger problem sits on the sideline.
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Packers Fans Have Seen This Matt LaFleur Problem Before
The Packers opened the season with a frustrating collapse against the Vikings, turning a 22-10 lead late in the third quarter into a loss after being outscored 22-0 in the fourth. For Green Bay, the hard part was not just the finish but how familiar the finish looked, with another late-game slip leaving fans and analysts to question how a game that seemed in hand got away.
Matt LaFleur drew the most heat for a key fourth-quarter sequence, declining a defensive offside penalty and choosing a quarterback sneak on fourth-and-1 that came up empty and led to a turnover on downs. LaFleur has acknowledged the teams issues closing out games, but this latest setback has only sharpened the criticism, because for Packers supporters it felt less like a one-off and more like a problem they have seen before. [Read more 🡒]