Aaron Rodgers is a problem, but Matt Eberflus must counter Matt LaFleur, too

Matt Eberflus doesn’t really have a rival in coaching, but he’s about to find one in Matt LaFleur.

When Eberflus takes the Bears to Lambeau Field on Sunday, it’ll be the beginning of a long-term chess match between the two head coaches. LaFleur’s dominance of former Bears coach Matt Nagy — a 6-0 record and 75-point scoring differential — was one of the reasons this job was open for Eberflus.

He said this week that the Packers never came up in his interviews with Bears chairman George McCaskey, but it’s so obvious, it didn’t need to be stated. It’s imperative the Bears catch up to the Packers. Between LaFleur and quarterback Aaron Rodgers, that’s going to be difficult, but if Eberflus is going to coach the Bears for the next decade, as he envisions, he’ll need to outfox LaFleur along the way. It’s nearly impossible to keep this job long without landing punches against the Packers.

The Bears had hoped that Nagy was the young hotshot who could turn their offense into a machine that could keep pace with Rodgers. He couldn’t.

Their new approach is to pair Eberflus, an experienced, defensive-minded coach, with Luke Getsy, an offensive coordinator stolen straight from LaFleur’s staff. They effectively have the Packers’ playbook.

“Certainly you have the insight of that, but it’s still gonna come down to execution,” Eberflus said. “You’re still gonna have to make the plays when you need to make them, and you’re still gonna have to play fundamentally sound.

“When you’re playing against a quarterback [Rodgers] that’s this experienced and this good, if you make a mistake, he’s gonna make you pay.”

There are only so many quarterbacks who force a defense to play perfectly to beat them.

“What makes this league special is guys like that,” Eberflus said.

However, LaFleur also has a claim to being a significant part of the Packers’ recent success. At 42, he’s already 39-11 and off to the best start to a coaching career in NFL history. There’s good reason for the Packers to feel confident about him leading them in a post-Rodgers future.

Eberflus, 52, and LaFleur first faced off in 2017, when LaFleur ran the Rams’ offense and Eberflus was the Cowboys’ linebackers coach and passing-defense coordinator. The Rams won that game 35-30.

They met twice in 2018, with Eber-flus steering the Colts’ defense and LaFleur serving as the Titans’ offensive coordinator. The Colts won those two games by a combined score of 71-27.

The Colts also held off LaFleur’s Packers 34-31 in overtime in 2020.Eberflus appeared to have decoded something about Rodgers in that game. After giving up 28 points in the first half, the Colts held him to an 83.7 passer rating the rest of the way. Rodgers said he watched that game this week but wasn’t sure how useful it was because the personnel are totally different from what he’ll see Sunday.

Eberflus felt the same way about preparing for LaFleur, saying there’s nothing to draw from facing him when he was with other teams.

“There’s a system that they’re in, but the system highlights the skill,” Eberflus said.

The skill is the biggest concern for the Bears. Their defense has rarely matched Rodgers’ talents, and now they’re going at him with a roster full of uncertainty. Rookie cornerback Kyler Gordon and rookie safety Jaquan Brisker, for example, have looked good so far, but they’ll need to be perfect against Rodgers.

So will Eberflus. The path to taking over the NFC North goes through Green Bay, Rodgers and LaFleur. Even if it turns out the Bears aren’t ready to topple the Packers yet, Eberflus must show from the start he has a better handle on them than his predecessors did.