Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur apparently won’t be making the trip down to Indianapolis for the NFL Scouting Combine next week, but general manager Brian Gutekunst will, as he’s scheduled to talk to the press on Tuesday. Gutekunst’s scheduled time is 10:15 am Eastern on Tuesday, the second-earliest slot of the day, presumably to get it out of the way.
Gutekunst got out of holding a mid-season press conference this year, as the Packers had an early bye week and didn’t make a trade at the 2025
deadline. He spoke to the media on February 4th, a delayed end-of-the-year presser due to the timing of the team’s extensions for LaFleur, Gutekunst and executive vice president of football operations Russ Ball.
LaFleur not going to the combine is hardly a surprise at this point, since he didn’t travel in 2023, 2024 or 2025, either. The Packers often bring in many of the players that they end up drafting in April via their allotted 30 pre-draft visits, and have since the pandemic. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like the organization values those in-person prospect interviews in Indianapolis much for the coaching staff, since they make it up on the back end with prospect visits to Green Bay.
For what it’s worth, the Packers still haven’t scheduled a press conference for defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, who was hired nearly a month ago. Things are going to have to move pretty quickly here, since the combine ends on March 2nd, the legal tampering period begins on March 9th and the start of the new league year (including free agency) is March 11th.
On top of that, LaFleur still needs to hire a special teams coordinator, too, after Rich Bisaccia resigned on February 17th. So far, four coaches are reported to have scheduled interviews with the Packers for the vacancy, but one has since taken a college job.
