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Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur's team will take a three-game losing streak into Week 18 at the Vikings. Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Another Late-Season Slump Raises Significant Questions About Packers

Originally posted on Green Bay Packers on SI
By Jacob Westendorf | Last updated Dec 29, 2025 11:00 AM ET

The Green Bay Packers are going to the playoffs but in the midst of a three-game losing streak. How they got to this point truly was a sight to behold. They’ve lost all three games in different ways.

On Dec. 14, they had the ball with a nine-point lead against the Denver Broncos with a chance to blow the game wide open. An interception and an avalanche of injuries followed. The Packers went from up nine to down eight and lost 34-26.

Six days later against the Chicago Bears, they had the game all but won with a chance to control their fate in the NFC North.

They led 16-6 with 5 minutes left in the game and 16-9 at the 2-minute warning after holding the Bears to a field goal. All that was needed was the formality of recovering an onside kick to salt the game away. The formality was not a formality, and the Packers would give up touchdowns on consecutive drives to lose 22-16 to fall a game-and-a-half behind the Bears in the division.

The losing streak continued on Saturday night with a bludgeoning by Derrick Henry and the powerful Baltimore Ravens run game. Henry ran around, over and through Green Bay’s defense. The Packers were booed off the field at the end of the first half and lost 41-24.

The Packers allowed 307 rushing yards, with Henry running for more yards than any visiting running back in Lambeau Field history. To call the game embarrassing is an insult to the word.

Green Bay’s third loss in as many weeks puts it in familiar territory. The Packers are locked into the NFC’s seventh seed when the playoffs begin in two weeks.

Familiar Territory for Packers

That will be the third consecutive years in which coach Matt LaFleur and quarterback Jordan Love reached the postseason as the conference’s final seed.

In 2023, that was acceptable. The Packers entered that season playing with house money. They simply wanted to find out what they had in their quarterback, who had spent three seasons developing behind Aaron Rodgers.

Expectations changed after the Packers went into Dallas and blew the Cowboys off the field in the wildcard round. They fell just short the following week against the San Francisco 49ers, but everything changed.

The Packers went into that postseason playing their best football. After starting 3-6, Green Bay won six of its final eight regular-season games before winning the aforementioned game in Dallas.

The arrow was pointed skyward, and the Packers were expected to compete for a Super Bowl championship as soon as Love’s second season as a starter.

The 2024 season would have been objectively good had those expectations not changed. While they improved to 11 wins, they limped into the postseason by losing three of their last five games. All three losses were to divisional opponents. In the wildcard playoffs, they suffered a 22-10 drubbing at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles.

This season has taken on a familiar trend.

Bumpy Road to the Playoffs

It wasn’t supposed to. This year was supposed to be different. Love was healthy and Green Bay’s defense was set to fly to new heights with Jeff Hafley in his second season as coordinator. And that was before the bold trade for one of the NFL’s best players in defensive end Micah Parsons.

Two statement wins to start the season only made the noise louder that the Packers were ready to compete for a title.

There were some bumps along the way, including an inexplicable loss to the Cleveland Browns and a tie against Parsons’ former team, the Cowboys.

They looked to have found their footing again with a beatdown of Aaron Rodgers and the Pittsburgh Steelers on the road, where Love completed a franchise-record 20 consecutive passes.

They lost their next two games, at home against Carolina and Philadelphia, looking lifeless on offense in both. After a 10-7 loss to the Eagles on Monday Night Football, the Packers fell to 5-3-1, and LaFleur was asked if he felt he was coaching for his job.

Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

“I’ll leave that for everybody else to decide. I’ll just focus on the day-to-day,” LaFleur said.

“I feel like you’re always coaching for everything in this league, you know? That’s just my mindset. It’s always been that way. You can’t ever exhale. You got to always be pushing. That’s just my mindset and that will be my mindset until they tell me not to coach anymore.”

The question at the time was not unfair. LaFleur is coaching without a contract beyond the 2026 season. With Ed Policy a new man in charge, this year was a pivotal one in deciding if LaFleur was the right man to steer the ship in 2026 and beyond.

It looked like from that point forward LaFleur had righted the ship, as the Packers won their next four games, including a statement victory against the Lions on Thanksgiving and a thrilling win over the rising Bears to move the Packers into first place in the division.

Packers Are Injured, Slumping

The wheels have fallen off from there. Yes, the Packers have suffered a laundry list of injuries, but that is to be expected. This is the NFL. There is a 100 percent injury rate. Ask the 49ers how they’ve been able to rebound without Nick Bosa and Fred Warner for most of the season.

What about the Chargers, who lost both of their starting offensive tackles but are in prime playoff position.

Or what about the Lions, who went 15-2 last season with Aidan Hutchinson missing the final 12 games.

The bottom line is that injuries are going to happen, and they cannot be used as an excuse for some of the things that have happened throughout the course of the season.

Injuries don’t account for playing inferior personnel on special teams, which resulted in catastrophic mistakes against Cleveland and Dallas.

Injuries do not account for the Eagles’ defensive line pointing out a critical fourth-and-1 running play.

Injuries do not account for the mountain of mistakes made at the end of last Saturday’s game in Chicago.

For a team with a veteran coach and a group of players that have played a lot of football the last three seasons, the Packers make far too many elementary-level mistakes for an alleged championship contender.

There’s one key component to the issues plaguing the Packers this season and in past seasons.

Failing to Reach Expectations

This is Titletown. This is not Seventh Seed City.

Simply making the playoffs or beating your division rivals might qualify as success in other cities, but not in Green Bay, Wis. The expectation is to win and compete for championships.

The general manager said so himself before the season began. He put his money where his mouth was by acquiring Parsons before the season started.

Parsons is gone, but the Packers have plenty of talent on that side of the ball. They’re less than 10 days removed from holding Chicago’s explosive offense to nine points in the first 58 minutes.

Wm. Glasheen/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The cold reality after Saturday’s loss to Baltimore is that the Packers have won nine games in 17 weeks of football. The games they lost early in the season to inferior opponents have predictably come back to bite them in a vicious way.

The Packers are going to win fewer games this season than last season, when Love suffered a Week 1 knee injury, missed two games and played hurt in others.

Next week’s game at the Vikings is meaningless, but not in the way they’d hoped. After a 2-0 start, the Packers started dreaming about going undefeated and having a first-round bye in the playoffs.

Instead, the Packers are limping into the postseason. Literally and figuratively. On a night when the Packers should have been desperate to keep their NFC North hopes alive, they were beaten soundly by the Ravens, who were playing without their two-time MVP quarterback.

The Ravens likely could have told the Packers what play they were running before snapping the ball. The Packers were simply powerless to stop it.

A Slap In the Face

The Chicago Bears are NFC North champions as a result. That means since Green Bay’s last division title in 2021, the Packers have seen all three rival teams win the division.

Meanwhile, the Packers are in the playoffs thanks to a seed that was only introduced to the NFL when the playoffs expanded in 2020.

That’s not going to cut it.

It’s fair to wonder what the conversation would be like had the Packers not qualified for the postseason under the previous format.

Rules are rules, and the whole league knew them coming into every season since 2020, but again, in a city named Titletown, the goal is significantly higher than being the seventh seed in the conference.

Regardless of what happens next week against Minnesota, the postseason is where LaFleur and the rest of this regime is ultimately going to be judged.

What do the powers that be think about a disappointing regular season followed up by an early-round exit in the playoffs? That would be two years in a row when the team has fallen well short of its expectations.

Will those results simply be passed off as a team that was too injured to compete at the highest level?

One thing is certain. If the Packers’ season ends with a playoff loss to Chicago in two weeks, the pressure cooker is going to heat up an otherwise cold winter in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on Green Bay Packers on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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