Matt LaFleur Playing With Your Fantasy Football Dreams

Green Bay Packers vs Carolina Panthers. Photo Credit: Mike Morbeck | Under Creative Commons License
Green Bay Packers vs Carolina Panthers. Photo Credit: Mike Morbeck | Under Creative Commons License

Welcome back to your favorite fantasy analysis site LAFB Network. Today we will be going over Matt LaFleur and his impact on your fantasy team. Sure, the Green Bay Packers went a few rounds in the playoffs and flipped their record from last year’s 6-9-1 to 13-3. But did his great season reflect onto your fantasy team? We will see.

LaFleur is our fourth installment on the coaching changes from last season; that makes us past the halfway mark for our old coaching changes. Currently, we have Adam Gase from the New York Jets and Bruce Arians with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers left. So stay tuned because we know how much both these new head coaches impacted our teams.

Matt LaFleur Playing With Your Fantasy Football Dreams

As you all know we’re going to be analyzing LaFleur’s best positional outputs to his worst. LaFleur made this fairly simple since when I calculated the totals of the QBs, RBs, WRs and TEs of this season and the last, the differences are crazy! Here are the differences between the seasons, then you can see how I begin my first stages of the analysis; +141.1, -20.48, -33.9, and -153.5.

If you had any Green Bay Packer players then you can probably figure out which position aligns with which number. Personally, I had only one and it is from the first category.

Rushing Game – Running Backs

2018-2019

Rush Yards – 1,325

Attempts – 282

Rush TDs – 14

Rec. Yards – 599

Targets – 104

Completions – 71

Rec. TDs – 1

2019-2020

Rush Yards – 1,582

Attempts – 356

Rush TDs – 17

Rec. Yards – 853

Targets – 133

Completions – 101

Rec. TDs – 8

I don’t want to be that guy, but LaFleur literally improved every scoring category for RBs in the Packer offense. He introduced a more efficient rushing game, involved the RBs in more passing plays and RBs like Aaron Jones and Jamaal Williams scored a total of 10 TDs more than the previous season.

The only real problem with LaFleur’s new offense was trying to figure out which RB would be getting the lead role for the majority of the game. Of course, Jones started every game for the Packers but there were games, especially in PPR, where Williams was the star back.

Naturally, Williams had the five receiving TDs but contrasted with a single rushing TD. That leaves Jones grubbing most of the value in the backfield. Boy didn’t we get a bargain in the 3rd or 4th rounds of the fantasy draft.

Passing Game – Quarterbacks

2018-2019

Pass Yards – 4,629

Completions – 392

Attempts – 640

Pass TDs – 25

Interceptions – 4

2019-2020

Pass Yards – 4,017

Completions – 356

Attempts – 573

Pass TDs – 26

Interceptions – 4

In total, the only major difference between these two seasons are the 612 passing yards. That comes out to 24.48 fantasy points that we are not getting from either Aaron Rodgers or whoever lined up under the Packers’ center for the week. Sure there was an extra TD this season but four points compared to the 24.48 might be a tough pill to swallow.

Another tough fact that we fantasy managers had to manage through was Rodgers’ hot and cold streaks this season. Nobody would argue that he was more hot than cold but 11 out of 16 games, Rodgers didn’t throw more than 250 yards. At first, I thought that might be a factor for the decrease in productivity but after further analysis, I realized the same thing kind of happened last year.

Last year Rodgers had seven games with less than 250 yards. But he threw for 400+ yards more times this season than last. My only conclusion is that Aaron Rodgers is an anomaly who decides his own hot and cold streaks. Not only that but, as mentioned before, the Green Bay Packers rushing game was hitting a good amount of time this year. I wouldn’t highlight this year as a bust for Rodgers or LaFleur in the passing game but it would be tough to see a future with more passing since they had so much rushing success.

Receiving Game – Tight Ends

2018-2019

Rec. Yards – 922

Targets – 124

Completions – 81

Rec. TDs – 4

2019-2020

Rec. Yards – 703

Targets – 91

Completions – 63

Rec. TDs – 5

As a rule of thumb, it is a curse to have a Green Bay Packer TE on your roster. They never produce when you need and when they do, they’re either in your permanent bench slot (so no one else can have them) or dropped because of rage.

Jimmy Graham is probably one of the biggest shots in the dark for fantasy football. When he was in New Orleans, Jimmy went first or second round. As he traveled from team to team, his production and value have been at a constant decline.

It seems that even with a coaching change, the TE position might be one of those positions the Packers don’t care much about. With that being said, I do still believe it might be one of the more consistent positions on the Packer offense. Their TE didn’t do anything special this season, but neither did he the season before.

Receiving Game – Wide Receivers

2018-2019

Rec. Yards – 3,106

Targets – 384

Completions – 239

Rec. TDs – 20

2019-2020

Rec. Yards – 2,461

Targets – 314

Completions – 192

Rec. TDs – 13

Finally we get to the largest fantasy point difference for the Green Bay Packers, the Wide Receivers. The difference between this season and last were 153.5 points, where the RBs gained 141.1 fantasy points. In this case the WR differential definitely overshadows the RB gains that LaFleur manufactured.

As fantasy managers, we felt this with Rodgers and Davante Adams primarily. No other WRs stood out for the Packers lineup but when Adams went down, that meant Aaron Rodgers had to make a lot of something out of nothing.

Luckily for both us and the Packers, Davante Adams was only missing in action (officially) for a month. He did have a few of those “game-time decisions” that ended up biting you in the butt, but for the most part, when Adams was on the field he lived up to your drafting expectations. In 12 games, Adams averaged 10.6 targets, 6.9 receptions and 83.1 yards. His TDs were down but that’ll happen when Aaron Jones swipes your ball-time.

Conclusion

Should Matt LaFleur stay in his current position as play caller for the Green Bay Packers? NAY!, but that is only if he keeps this kind of one sided progression on. If LaFleur is turning the Packers into the next rushing attack of the 1950s then so be it. But if not, then I believe that this season could be a regression of the Packers large numbers from a well-known Mike McCarthy system. If we learned anything this season from Matt LaFleur then it should be that running the ball efficiently definitely racks up some Ws in the record book.

Green Bay Packers vs Carolina Panthers. Photo Credit: Mike Morbeck | Under Creative Commons License

Green Bay Packers vs Carolina Panthers. Photo Credit: Mike Morbeck | Under Creative Commons License