Matt LaFleur didn’t flinch when the Packers had a chance to keep points on the board in Minnesota. He chose the aggressive route, and the result was another late collapse that turned a lead into a 39-22 loss to the Vikings on Sunday afternoon.
The sequence that will get the most attention came with just over 13 minutes left. Trey Smack had kicked a field goal that would have pushed Green Bay ahead by eight, but LaFleur accepted an offside penalty instead.
That left the Packers needing to convert on a quarterback sneak, and Jordan Love was stopped. From there, Minnesota ripped off 22 straight points and finished off the game.
“I think that’s just we’re going to be aggressive,” LaFleur said in his postgame press conference. “It was going to be an eight-point game.
If it would have been a two-possession game, I probably would have thought otherwise. But I thought we had a chance.
We didn’t do very well in the red zone. . . . Sometimes you live and die by that, but we’re gonna be aggressive and we’re gonna try to go for the throat in that situation.”
For Green Bay, the decision only added to a pattern that has been hanging over the team since last season. The Packers have now lost six straight games overall, and in four of those defeats they’ve held two-score leads. Sunday’s 22-10 advantage was the latest one to disappear.
The reasons have varied from loss to loss, but the ending keeps landing on LaFleur.
“I think it’s going to be a topic of conversation for all you guys until we do it,” LaFleur said. “That’s the bottom line.”
The Packers will try to stop the slide against the Jets in Week 2.
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