GREEN BAY, Wis. — Matt LaFleur has this regular-season thing all figured out.
Three years with LaFleur as the Green Bay Packers coach, three times they’ve had a first-round bye in the playoffs — including the No. 1 seed each of the last two seasons.
But he’s never done this before: His team wrapped it up with a game still left in the regular season.
Before the Packers (13-3) even stepped on Lambeau Field Sunday night, they knew that a win would make next week’s regular-season finale at Detroit meaningless in terms of their playoff position. They had the Arizona Cardinals, who beat the Dallas Cowboys, earlier in the day to thank for that.
They took care of the rest themselves with a 37-10 win over the Kirk Cousins-less Minnesota Vikings.
The question now is this: Will they do anything more with it than they have the last two postseasons?
LaFleur’s playoff resume reads: Two NFC Championship Games, two losses — including last season’s right here at Lambeau to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Before LaFleur and Co. begin to think about that, they’ll have to decide how to handle Week 18 against the Lions. The last two years, they needed the final weekend of the season to secure their playoff seed.
Now, he faces the age-old NFL debate: Play the starters in the finale to keep them sharp or give them the weekend off to preserve their health? After they watch Wild-card weekend, their first playoff game will be either Jan 22 or 23 in the Divisional round.
Aaron Rodgers’ fractured pinky toe on his left foot no doubt will factor into LaFleur’s decision.
The toe didn’t seem to bother him on Sunday night even in the bitter cold. It was 11 degrees and kickoff and got colder as the night went on.
Rodgers, who said this week that he likes it “the colder, the better,” threw for 211 yards in the first half, 118 of them to Davante Adams. It was Rodgers’ highest first-half total since Week 4 of last season and Adams’ highest in a first half since Week 4 of 2019.
Their halftime lead of 20-3 should have been even bigger but for three failed red-zone trips (two fields and a turnover on downs).
They even ran the ball well with their second-highest first-half total (88 yards) of the season, thanks in large part to Aaron Jones’ runs of 27 and 28 yards — the first time in his career he’s had multiple 25-plus yard carries in the same game.
Rodgers finished 29-of-38 for 288 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. It was his sixth straight game with multiple touchdowns and no interceptions, tying Don Meredith for the second-longest streak in NFL history. And Adams ended with 11 catches for 136 yards and a touchdown.
If Rodgers doesn’t play in the final, his season numbers — in 15 games — will be: 68.6 completion percentage for 3,977 yards and 35 touchdowns with only four interceptions.
And Adams, with 117 catches, broke his own franchise single-season reception record. He’s at 1,498 yards with 11 touchdowns.
It wasn’t much of a test for the Packers’ defense, considering it was journeyman Sean Mannion — and not Cousins due to COVID-19 — in charge of the Vikings’ offense.
It also gives voters an extra week to consider LaFleur for coach of the year. He didn’t win in either of his first two seasons but a third-straight 13-win season — and a 39-9 record in three seasons — may be too hard to ignore this time around. At 39-9, no coach in NFL history has won more games in his first three seasons.
All in a season that started with that unsightly 38-3 loss to the New Orleans Saints — a game that Rodgers downplayed by saying afterward was “just one game.”
“We’ve got 16 to go,” Rodgers said at the time.
And they needed only 15 of them to show they’re the NFC’s best heading into the playoffs.
