GREEN BAY, Wis. — Matt LaFleur enters his fifth season as the Green Bay Packers head coach feeling as though he’s just getting started.
The trade of a four-time MVP quarterback has a way of doing that.
“It feels like Year 1, quite frankly,” LaFleur said Tuesday, the day before the Packers begin their first training camp since the trade of Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets. “It feels like we’re right back where we started when I first got hired here.”
But LaFleur said that rookie-energy has him excited for the first day of training camp on Wednesday morning.
"That’s exciting. I think there’s a lot of excitement that goes along with that. And we’re going to coach these guys hard and we expect them to show up with a great attitude every day and give everything they can," the head coach said.
The exit of Rodgers and several other veterans make this one of Green Bay’s most intriguing camps in recent memory.
New first-team quarterback Jordan Love has started only one game since the Packers selected him out of Utah State with the 26th overall pick in the 2020 draft. Many of his receivers are also young and inexperienced.
LaFleur said the biggest obstacle heading into camp is all the unknowns now that Rodgers has moved on.
“Every year has its own unique set of challenges,” said LaFleur, who led the Packers to three straight 13-win seasons before they slipped to 8-9 last season. “But I think it’s going to be how quickly we can acclimate these young players and get them ready to roll and how we come together as a team. So there’s a lot of excitement today.”
There’s a lot of youth, as well.
Out of all the younger players, Love is likely to get the most scrutiny, but LaFleur said it’s not all about the quarterback this training camp.
“It’s not just about Jordan,” said LaFleur. “It’s about everybody else. We’ve got a very young receiving corps. We’ve got a young tight end group. And so it’s about the collective more so than just one person. It’s going to be fluid and he just needs to get the reps. The last thing I want to do for him is have him paralyzed, thinking of too many things at the line of scrimmage. I think that takes time. It takes experience.”
Green Bay’s top two returning wideouts are Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs, who were rookies last season. The Packers gave Love a few more options by drafting Oregon State tight end Luke Musgrave and Michigan State wide receiver Jayden Reed in the second round as well as South Dakota State tight end Tucker Kraft in the third.
The Packers passed up on adding a veteran receiver after the departure of Allen Lazard, whose 60 catches for 788 yards led Green Bay in both categories last season. Lazard and Rodgers are now teammates with the Jets.
“If the right player and the right price and all that kind of stuff comes around, we’ll certainly contemplate it and see if that makes some sense,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “But the players we have right now in that group need to play. They need the reps.”
That could lead to an adjustment in how the Packers handle their preseason games.
The past two years, the Packers didn’t play most of their starters in any exhibition games. They already essentially knew what they had and figured the reps the first-team players got in joint practices during training camp would suffice.
Now that this team is less experienced in key areas, LaFleur said he hasn’t decided on how he might use his starters in the preaseason games.
“I think it’s going to be fluid in regard to that approach,” LaFleur said. “We’ll kind of take it one day at a time and really want to feel where we’re at. And if it’s something that we feel that they need to play a little more in the preseason, then we’ll do that.”
Gutekunst said he has mixed emotions about using Love in preseason games, and he said that applied to all the young players on Green Bay’s roster.
As a veteran, Rodgers played little, if any, in the last several preseasons. However, that may look different in the onset of the Love era.
“It’s a little bit of that double-edged thing,” Gutekunst said. “You’d like to see him play a lot if you could promise me we could protect him and keep him healthy, you know. I think that will probably be something Matt, as he goes through it, it’s a feel thing for what he feels he needs. I go back and forth.”
Love and his receivers will get chances to test themselves before the season when the Packers have joint practices against two different teams. They’ve scheduled a joint practice with the Bengals in Cincinnati on Aug. 9 and two practice sessions with the New England Patriots from Aug. 16-17 in Green Bay.
That should give LaFleur’s staff a little better idea about what they can expect from their young offense heading into the Sept. 10 season opener at Chicago.
“I think we’ve got a lot of talented players,” LaFleur said. “And it’s everybody’s responsibility to get them to become the best version of themselves sooner than later.”
That includes Rashan Gary, who is still recovering from an ACL injury. The linebacker will start camp on the “Physically Unable to Perform” list.
“He’s such an important factor for our football team,” said Gutekunst. “We’re going to be very cautious in that, as far as making sure that he’s good to go. He’s got a long career ahead of him. We want to make sure that we do everything we can to get him to where he can go let it loose.”
For those who are guaranteed to be on the field, they can expect hot days ahead. LaFleur said he isn’t too worried about the forecast for high temperatures, though.
“I think it’s going to be very important for our guys to make sure they stay hydrated, and doing whatever they can do so that we don’t have anybody go out there and overheat,” said LaFleur. “It’s part of training camp. We like it. You don’t want it easy on anybody.”
Additionally, both Gutekunst and LaFleur praised the Packers’ new football facility inside Lambeau Field, which they feel will help with efficiency and relationships.