Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LeFleur and offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett are in their second year on the job for the Green and Gold. Last summer, prior to the start of the 2019 NFL season, an imbecile on a fantasy football podcast with about as much NFL credentials as the nearly dead plant in our Editorial Department here at the paper, called both Hackett and LaFleur “The worst hires possible.”

Well I guess one can draw their own conclusion about a duo that has gone 21-7 to date, their first season ending a game away from the Super Bowl.

On a similar note, LaFleur and Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst have been scoffed at, ridiculed and made out to look like fools for not drafting a wide receiver or top-tier tight end in the first round of this past spring’s NFL Draft. As a proud armed forces veteran and American, I haven’t watched a minute of the Packers this fall on my own time; which will be a column for a different day. So maybe I am out of the loop because of not watching, but isn’t the Packers offense as dynamic as it’s been in a very long time this season? And if I am not mistaken, aren’t their wide receivers and tight ends on the active roster all guys that have been there a couple of seasons or more? As far as I know, the answer to those two questions is yes. Geez, maybe the stone throwers should have thrown their stones at themselves instead of at Gutekunst and LaFleur? Perhaps not, I guess we’ll see when the season ends. …

Current Negaunee head football coach and athletic director Paul Jacobson was the head freshman coach at Mount Pleasant High School in 1994, when LeFleur, a Mt. Pleasant graduate in 1998, was on the roster. Jacobson’s assistant was his former Central Michigan University teammate and then graduate student Chuck Pellegrini of Norway. Pellegrini, who is currently the facilities manager at Norway-Vulcan Area Schools and a varsity football assistant coach, is also Daily News Entertainment Editor Maggie Lanthier’s brother-in-law. LaFleur was also said to be in the Iron Mountain area one weekend, approximately a dozen years or so ago. He was in a few local watering holes with a group of football coaches that included a former area high school football legend, who will remain nameless, but does have a mountain named after him off of the Upper Pine Creek Road in Breitung Township. …

Staying with Jacobson and Pellegrini, the two of them appeared in Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook. The now retired longtime Detroit Free Press sports writer/columnist released the book this fall, entailing 50 years worth of player rankings and stories. The contents of the book, and the U.P. players cited in it, will also be a future column or feature story. It contains McCabe’s picks for the best prep athletes, in the state of Michigan, in nearly every sport, during his 50 years at the Free Press. In the high school football category, Jacobson, an OT, is the lone U.P. player to make the “Best of the Rest” list for Class C. The 1987 Negaunee graduate, like Pellegrini in 1983, was an All-UP Dream Team selection at offensive tackle. Pellegrini made McCabe’s Class D “Best of the Rest” list as a defensive lineman. Pellegrini, after his playing days at CMU ended, had two brief stints in the NFL, playing in preseason games with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers in separate years. Chuck once told me as we were setting up the bleachers for the Don Hill Tournament one winter, that while with NE in a preseason game versus the NY Giants in the Meadowlands, New Jersey, he was hit/ran over so hard by Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, that it felt like he got flattened but two or three people at once. I can’t even imagine. …

Some other local connections to LaFleur: Two time All-U.P. Dream Team running back, Norway Class of 1999 graduate Jason Chounard and LaFleur were teammates at Saginaw Valley State, while Class of 1974 Iron Mountain graduate Randy Awery was head coach of the Division II Cardinals. Other U.P. players to play for Awery — and teammates with Chounard and LaFleur — are Mark LaFreniere from Iron Mountain, Brad Sundholm from North Dickinson and Neil Baumgartner from West Iron.

In a recent Twitter private message conversation I recently had with Awery he said “I recruited a lot of Upper Peninsula players in my days at Saginaw Valley State because there were some great players that were very well coached, well disciplined and hard-working which helped bring a great work ethic to the team. Dickinson County as well as the upper part of Michigan has always produced some great athletes and good football players. But more importantly I have found they have produced wonderful people. People who are fun to work around, who have great leadership skills and have a work ethic that never quits and those are the kind of qualities I was always was looking for in a player.”

Awery compared LaFleur to Iron Mountain native and current NFL Network analyst Steve Mariucci at the quarterback position. “Steve was always one of the best quarterbacks and leaders I have ever worked around. Being around Steve in high school at Iron Mountain as well as at NMU he helped me to see what a quarterback needed to be like. Matt was very much like Mooch. Matt has a great mind for the game of football and is an awesome leader who never quits and he orchestrated many great comebacks in those years that we were playing at Saginaw Valley State University.”

In reference to both Chounard and LaFleur, Awery said, “Matt and Jason both had it all and were phenomenal athletes. I always would say you couldn’t tackle either of them in a phone booth.”