Matt LaFleur is incomes the ire of a number of of his Inexperienced Bay Packers gamers early in coaching camp.
On Tuesday, LaFleur punished offensive sort out Rasheed Walker for his altercation with defensive finish Kingsley Enagbare.
Nonetheless, essentially the most fascinating interplay of the day got here between LaFleur and tight finish Tucker Kraft. Per Matt Schneidman of The Athletic, LaFleur called out Kraft for 2 questionable fumbles in the course of the first week of observe.
Each “fumbles” got here after the play was over or when the ball fell out of bounds.
“Actually, everyone knows what sort of participant Tucker Kraft is and could be,” LaFleur mentioned. “He can’t permit Evan Williams to achieve round and punch a ball out, so it’s difficult everyone and hopefully that makes us that a lot better.”
The third-year tight finish took problem with LaFleur calling him out in entrance of the media and blamed the teaching workers for implementing observe guidelines that made it straightforward for offensive gamers to fumble.
“I’d say quite a lot of the occasions — there’s sure guidelines you play with in observe, like simply letting the protection punch repeatedly,” Kraft mentioned. “You’re not allowed to stiff-arm. I suppose all I’ve are excuses. Sure, I’m engaged on not fumbling the ball in observe.”
Schneidman mentioned Kraft answered the query with a tone of sarcasm. Kraft was pissed off that he could not defend the ball by stiff-arming a defender attempting to poke the ball from his undefended arm.
Kraft acknowledged that in observe, he has to “play by the principles” LaFleur makes and is attempting to work on having a “sure sir, no sir” angle along with his head coach. He then made a obscure reference a couple of “bus nice” and accused LaFleur of throwing him underneath the bus in entrance of the media.
Schneidman believes the tight finish is perhaps calling for Inexperienced Bay to nice LaFleur after his discouraging quote Tuesday morning.
“So sure, the Packers’ third-year tight finish is perhaps calling for his head coach to be fined — not by the league, in fact, however by the staff — for what he perceived as throwing him underneath the bus,” Schneidman wrote. “Is Kraft being severe about fining LaFleur?
“In all probability not. Is he peeved LaFleur referred to as him out? It certain looks as if it.”
LaFleur would possibly do higher to have a dialog with Kraft earlier than dragging his identify into information conferences with reporters. It is clear Tucker would not see eye-to-eye with LaFleur about fumbles.
It is a good reminder to these getting overly excited or nervous studying observe stories that what occurs at observe must be taken with a grain of salt.
Almost certainly, Tucker goes to be nice.
