Matt LaFleur’s trip to Denver with the Green Bay Packers allowed him a chance to reminisce about one of the key mentors who helped him become an NFL head coach.
LaFleur took his entire team Thursday night to Shanahan’s Steakhouse before the Packers held a joint practice Friday with the Broncos at the team’s practice facility in Dove Valley. The two teams will play an exhibition game Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High.
Mike Shanahan is coaching royalty in this city. He’s also one of the most important figures in LaFleur’s life.
“Coach Shanahan has had a tremendous impact (on me),” LaFleur said. “He gave me my first position job in 2010 with Washington as the quarterbacks coach. I learned so much from him, not only X’s and O’s-wise, but how to manage a staff. The attention to detail he would put into it was like nobody I’ve ever been around. All of us, when you look back on it, we’ve had a lot of guys that have gone on to be head coaches, and I think it’s because we learned the right way from Coach Shanahan.”
LaFleur is 56-27 as the Packers coach, leading the team to a pair of NFC championship appearances in his five seasons. Long before he became one of the most successful young head coaches in the NFL, he was part of one of the most famous staffs in recent league history.
He was quarterbacks coach for Washington with Shanahan from 2010 to ’13. In both the 2012 and 2013 seasons, Shanahan’s coaching staff had five future NFL head coaches on it: Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator; Sean McVay coached the tight ends; Raheem Morris was the defensive backs coach; and Mike McDaniel was an offensive assistant.
Washington won the NFC East in 2012 with rookie Robert Griffin III at quarterback but went 3-13 the following year. Jay Gruden replaced the elder Shanahan as head coach, and LaFleur spent 2014 as quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame before returning to the NFL and eventually being named Packers head coach in 2019.
Shanahan, who has been a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the coach/contributor category in both 2022 and 2023, was not at the dinner. LaFleur said he had a prior commitment.
“I’ve never been around someone who could focus as long as he could. I remember, back in 2012, when we were getting ready (for the draft). We knew we were going to draft Robert Griffin and we were getting ready to implement the zone read,” LaFleur said. “We didn’t want to talk to anybody around the league about it.
“He would just sit in there for hours. We had this cut-up that was a couple hundred plays long. It was Baylor’s offense. It was the Carolina Panthers with Cam Newton. It was Denver, with what they were doing with (Tim) Tebow. I’ll never forget. … We would watch it all, and we’d be in there for a couple of hours, and everybody is somewhat exhausted from the process and he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s run it back to the top.’ We all looked at each other like, ‘How is this guy still doing this?’ He had some stamina when it came to watching tape. He was so thorough in the draft process with how he evaluated players.
“I think there were just a ton of lessons that we took from our time there.”
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