For weeks, ESPN’s NFL insider Adam Schefter has been consistent in saying that the Green Bay Packers and head coach Matt LaFleur want to get an extension done, with the issue not being the Packers’ desire to keep LaFleur but instead the price it would cost to keep LaFleur . On Wednesday, days after this alleged meeting between LaFleur and president/CEO Ed Policy was supposed to take place and set the record straight about the future path of the organization, Schefter gave some updates to ESPN Wisconsin.
When asked where the two sides stand, Schefter said the following:
Yeah, there’s no deal right now. It’s a negotiation. And when it’s a negotiation, and there’s no deal, there can be a breakthrough any moment. Again, I think both sides would like to make that happen.
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The more it lingers out there, the more you wonder where it’s going to go and how it’s going to result. The way, right now, that I would interpret it: It’s up in the air.
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By the way, if you’re Green Bay, and you don’t want to pay him, and I’m Matt LaFleur, I’m saying, “If you don’t want to pay me, then let me go.”
It sure seems like LaFleur has a price in mind and wants the Packers to pay it. With nine open head coaching jobs in the NFL, if LaFleur were on the market, a five-year, $15 million per year deal wouldn’t be some shocking figure, based on my understanding of where the league is at right now. Now, with that being said, is Green Bay willing to commit $75 million (the industry standard is for a coaching contract to be guaranteed in the NFL) for LaFleur, especially after how the team stumbled in the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears? That’s the big question.
But LaFleur and his camp seem to have a good feel of their number and are comfortable holding that line. Personally, I believe that it’s about the money (not necessarily one-year spend but the commitment to all the guarantees that LaFleur would get on the open market), as Schefter has been reporting for some time now. If the Packers wanted to dump LaFleur, that would have been a quick conversation. If they wanted to pay LaFleur his market rate, that also would have been a quick conversation. Instead, this thing is dragging out.
As far as a timeline goes, here’s what Schefter said he expects:
My guess is that it’ll be decided this week, at some point in time. I don’t know exactly when. But for the sake of everybody involved, everyone needs to know and move on with their lives in whatever way that is.
Schefter said that he doesn’t expect other coaching jobs to be filled before there’s clarity on the LaFleur situation, outside of a potential hiring of John Harbaugh, currently the belle of the ball. So there goes the idea of a drained supply of coaches changing the market and driving up demand, resulting in a team panicking and trading high draft picks away for LaFleur.
An interesting thing from a timeline perspective, at least to me, is if anything changes if defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley leaves for a head coaching job. One reason why NFL teams almost never let head coaches play out that final year of their contract is that it’s very hard to hire coordinators and assistants when the guy in the big chair might not be there the next season. Could a defensive coordinator vacancy that the Packers would need to fill potentially be the catalyst for this situation? Who knows. Something has to give eventually, though.
Finally, Schefter touches on the Packers’ history of spending on their coaching staff (not just head coach), which we wrote about last night here at APC.
They have certain budgets that they want to stay within and certain money allocations they’re used to spending. You know, as an example, the New York Giants are paying Brian Daboll, I don’t know the exact number, but let’s just call it $7 million a year. If they want to go hire John Harbaugh, are they going to pay double or triple that? Yesterday’s prices are not today’s prices. You want to get the best of the best? You’re gonna have to pay for that.
I don’t know exactly what Matt makes right now, but if the Packers want to go hire John Harbaugh, they might end up paying close to double in salary. Double.
This, truly, is the elephant in the room when I talk to sources who represent coaches around the league. When LaFleur was hired as a first-time head coach, he was making around $5 million a year, less than Daboll and far less than Chicago’s Ben Johnson ($13 million per year) and Jacksonville’s Liam Coen ($12 million per year), who were all first-time head coaches when they got those gigs.
I was told reliably, and reported on this site earlier this month, that LaFleur is making “less than double” his initial rate (source’s phrasing, I’m not being secretive), so less than $10 million per year. If Harbaugh is going to get “triple” Daboll’s rate (of $7 million), as Schefter said, these numbers check out. If the Packers wanted to pay Harbaugh $21 million, that would be more than double LaFleur’s current salary (less than $10 million).
Harbaugh is going to get a raise for himself and his staff because they are going to hit the market, despite the late-game struggles they had in Baltimore over the years. It sure seems like LaFleur and his camp are willing to go through this staring contest with the Packers if they don’t pay him what he could otherwise receive on the open market, too. And it looks like Green Bay has real concerns about handing over that type of commitment.
My only question is whether the Packers will increase these “certain budgets,” as Schefter put it, if they do move on from LaFleur. Their spend on a post-LaFleur staff will tell us a lot about whether their hesitation was with LaFleur, specifically, or the current coaching market at large.
