When your season dies twice in the same building, the questions don’t wait for morning. Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur boarded the team plane Saturday night knowing the scoreboard they left behind told only half the story. 21-3 at halftime against the Chicago Bears, 31-27 at the final whistle, and somewhere in between, the kind of meltdown that turns hot seats into ejector seats. Except LaFleur isn’t budging. Not yet, anyway.

“Of course,” LaFleur said on Sunday, January 11, when asked about his desire for a probable year 8 in Green Bay. “This is one of one. I love this place. I love the people. As much as you guys drive me nuts sometimes, I love you guys. I love our players, the locker room, everybody in our organization. This is a unique place.”

But will a return next season be so easy? Matt LaFleur also found himself in conversation with Packers president and CEO Ed Policy on the flight back home. Brief and to the point, it seemed like the kind of exchange that sets wheels in motion. Policy just watched his team surrender an 18-point cushion to a division rival in the playoffs. Now, he needs answers, and he has decided exactly when he expects them. According to USA Today reporter Ryan Wood, “they will meet soon to determine his future.”

But when reporters asked LaFleur about his future in Green Bay, he pivoted like a quarterback escaping pressure.

“That’s not my focus right now,” LaFleur said. “We’re fresh off this loss. My sole focus is on our players, our team, and just trying to find ways to get better. There’s going to be a time when we’re going to get together either later tonight [Sunday] or tomorrow [Monday] sometime.”

The timing of this Wild Card meltdown cuts even deeper than LaFleur’s uncertain future. Hours before kickoff, NFL insider Ian Rapoport had reported that Green Bay was planning to extend LaFleur’s contract once the season concluded. It was supposed to be a vote of confidence wrapped in mutual interest.

But then kicker Brandon McManus cost the team 7 points by missing two field goals and one extra point. Just these would have been enough to secure a win. But quarterback Jordan Love’s offense went catatonic after halftime, managing just 6 points in the second half while Bears quarterback Caleb Williams carved up the defense for 25 points. With that, LaFleur suddenly finds himself on shaky ground.

What’s next for Matt LaFleur and Green Bay?

The Packers entered Saturday with a 33-2 record in playoff games when leading by double digits. They’re now 33-3, joining infamy alongside the 2014 NFC Championship collapse against the Seattle Seahawks and a 2003 divisional flameout versus the Philadelphia Eagles. But this heartbreak at Soldier Field carries extra baggage. It’s the second time in three weeks Chicago erased a massive Green Bay lead, the first costing them the division, and this latest one costing them everything.

LaFleur has now watched his team unravel across five straight losses to close their 2025-26 campaign. Now, he’s staring down a contract that expires after 2026 while Ed Policy has made it clear he’s “generally opposed” to his coaching staff entering contract years without new deals.

The CEO has also inherited a coach with a 76-40-1 regular season record and a 3-6 postseason record with zero Super Bowl appearances. He has also inherited seven years of institutional memory. Policy sat second-in-command on the committee that hired LaFleur back in 2019 and has watched him navigate the Aaron Rodgers divorce into the Jordan Love era. That history buys credibility, but Saturday’s disaster now tests it.

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Matt LaFleur isn’t begging for his job, even if the optics suggest he should. “It means everything to me,” he said of coaching the Packers. “This is the greatest organization in the world, in my opinion.”

LaFleur sees talent buried under the rubble of injuries and missed opportunities; a roster one or two adjustments away from contention. His quarterback is all in with him, too. But Ed Policy could see something else: a franchise that hasn’t reached the NFC North summit since Rodgers left, a team that implodes when the margin for error shrinks. The meeting between them will determine whether Saturday was an anomaly or a pattern too dangerous to ignore. Either way, Green Bay won’t stay quiet for long.