Can Packers coach Matt LaFleur buck the trend and bounce back from the playoff disaster?

In 2003, when Green Bay Packers coach Mike Sherman lost his nerve and a fourth-and-26 play later doomed his team, Sherman also lost the locker room.

Things were never the same for Mike McCarthy either, after Green Bay blew a 19-7 lead in the final three minutes against Seattle and lost the 2014 NFC Championship Game in Seattle.

If the Packers and current head coach Matt LaFleur choose to remain married for an eighth season, Green Bay brass must wonder if LaFleur will ever regain the locker room’s full trust.

The Packers ended the season on a five-game losing streak, the longest in 17 years. Green Bay’s troubling pattern of blowing leads reached new heights in 2025.

The Packers had a 99% chance of beating Cleveland in Week 3 with 3 minutes left, and a 99% chance of beating Chicago with 2 minutes left in their Week 16 game. Green Bay’s chances of beating the Bears in the Wild were 96% with 5 minutes left.

The odds of Green Bay going 0-3 in those games were 1 in 250,000, but that’s exactly what the Packers did.

Green Bay also blew a 13-point lead to Dallas and settled for a tie, then squandered a nine-point second-half lead to Denver.

After Green Bay’s playoff collapse against Chicago, linebacker Quay Walker — who will likely leave in free agency — gave perhaps the most scathing review of the current administration.

“For me to sit here and say we should have won the game, we didn’t execute the game and that was a problem for us,” Walker said. “Honestly just finishing games, putting guys away.

“Even before I got here, I feel like that’s always been a part of this organization when it comes to big games, like finishing games. No one cares what you did in the first half. It just comes down to when it’s double zeros in the fourth quarter or whatever the case may be, do we have more points than them? And that hasn’t been the case at all.”

Running back Josh Jacobs was equally troubled.

“We were damn near 20 points ahead.”

Safety Javon Bullard agreed.

“If we’ve taken someone down, we’ve got to put them away,” Bullard said. “That (expletive), it’s getting damn near embarrassing. We can’t do (expletive) like that and expect to win these big games against these good (expletive) teams. We’re going to have to get our (expletive) together.”

Green Bay’s last two coaches were never able to fully recover from devastating playoff losses.

Sherman didn’t really lose his team because of the 4^e-and-26 in 2003. He lost it on the previous possession.

The Packers led the Eagles 17–14 in the NFC Divisional playoffs and faced a fourth-and-two from the Eagles’ 41-yard line with 2 1/2 minutes remaining. Green Bay had its best offensive line since the Lombardi era that year and running back Ahman Green ran for 1,883 yards that season.

Instead of giving his potent running game a chance to try to seal the deal, Sherman left things to his shaky defense – which ultimately failed.

Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb hit Freddie Mitchell 28 yards on a fourth-and-26 play that tied David Akers. Philadelphia then had the upper hand in overtime, 20-17.

From that moment on, things were never the same again.

Sherman was stripped of his duties as general manager after the 2004 season. And after a 4-12 campaign in 2005, he was fired.

“It wasn’t the fourth-and-26 that ruined it for a lot of guys,” one player told me after Sherman was fired. “That (expletive) happens. It didn’t happen on fourth down. It was Mike not having any confidence in our ability to pick up any (expletive) ground.”

McCarthy didn’t lose the locker room like Sherman once did. But things were also never the same for McCarthy after the 2014 NFC Championship Game loss in Seattle.

The Packers led 16-0 at halftime and had a 19-7 lead with just over three minutes remaining after Russell Wilson’s fourth interception of the game. At that point, the Packers’ odds of winning were 99.9%.

But Green Bay’s defense collapsed, Brandon Bostick fumbled away on an onside kick and Tramon Williams ultimately gave up the game-winning touchdown pass to Jermaine Kearse as the Packers fell, 28-22.

McCarthy was heavily criticized for his late-game management and his decision to make a pair of early field goals as Green Bay reached Seattle’s 1-yard line.

McCarthy went 31-28-1 over the next 3 ¾ seasons before being fired with four games left in the 2018 season.

When LaFleur returns in 2026, he will have to prove he can bounce back from a series of epic collapses — something Sherman and McCarthy could never do.