The NFL’s Coach of the Year award is a nebulous one since its official description is the “coach judged to have had the most outstanding season.”
What defines an outstanding season for an NFL head coach is certainly in the eye of the beholder, with some defining the award as the best turnaround effort — recent winners like the Cleveland Browns‘ Kevin Stefanski (2020, 2023) and the New York Giants‘ Brian Daboll (2022) come to mind — while others reward regular-season dominance en route to top playoff seeds — recent winners like the Baltimore Ravens‘ John Harbaugh (2019) and former Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel (2021) come to mind.
Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur, whose 56-27 record (.675 win percentage) ranks as the 11th-highest win percentage of all time just ahead of Paul Brown (213-105, .672) and just behind Don Shula (318-148-31, .682), has led his squad to both types of regular seasons in his five years in charge since 2019, but he doesn’t have any Coach of the Year hardware to show for it. His 2019-2021 Packers are the only teams in NFL history to win at least 13 games for three seasons in a row.
Entering 2024, LaFleur may have his best shot yet with +1000 odds to win the award, the third best in the NFL trailing only new Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh (+800) and Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus (+900), according to Caesars Sportsbook.
Here is a look at four of his five seasons (2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023) in which LaFleur has had a case to win the award. Then we’ll look at what he and the Packers have to do in order for him to take it home in 2024.
2019
Case: Significant team improvement
COY: John Harbaugh (Ravens)
Packers record: 13-3 (No. 2 seed in NFC)
The Packers went a disappointing 6-9-1 in 2018, Mike McCarthy’s final year of a 13-year run as Green Bay’s head coach, as he and future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers clashed about the team’s offensive playbook. Rodgers led the league in touchdown-to-interception ratio (25-2), and Green Bay ranked 14th in scoring (23.5), but something was off.
McCarthy’s quarterback clearly no longer believed in his playbook since Rodgers led the NFL in passes thrown away with 48, 13 more than the next closest quarterback, Case Keenum of the Denver Broncos (35), had that year. Following a disappointing 20-17 home loss against the Josh Rosen-led Arizona Cardinals in Week 13, Packers team…
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