DENNY AND KRISTI LaFleur knew their sons, Matt and Mike, would give them a hard time, but they provided a tour of their Green Bay, Wisconsin home anyway.
As they descended a stairway, both Denny and Kristi warned that Matt would surely not approve.
“No, don’t show them the ‘Focker Wall,’” Matt would instruct his parents.
But, after turning a corner, there, in all its glory, was “The Focker Wall,” -- a key focal point in the LaFleur home. The nickname is an homage to a scene from the movie “Meet the Fockers” in which it displays all of Gaylord Focker’s accomplishments, from ninth-place ribbons to childhood stuffies.
The LaFleur family wall, for the record, is a bit more modest.
There are large portraits of Matt and Mike quarterbacking the teams at Saginaw Valley State and Elmhurst College, respectively.
“They’re going to kill me when I say this, they were Doug Flutie-type quarterbacks,” Denny said, grinning, as he described the photos. There are vintage-style Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals signs, and several family photos, mostly featuring their four grandchildren, at NFL stadiums.
“Terrible,” Matt LaFleur said of the wall, and his mom’s choice decor. “So brutal,” chimes in younger brother, Mike, on a group text thread.
But Kristi and Denny do not think twice about their sons’ decor opinions. They like what they like. They’re proud. This is their home. Plus, no amount of good-natured ribbing could disband this group.
“We’re not a very big family,” Denny, Kristi, Matt and Mike each echoed, separately. “But we are a tight-knit family.”
Matt, 46, and Mike, 39, grew up in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, a town of 24,000 people about 2½ hours northwest of Detroit. A seven-year age gap separates the brothers, along with noticeable personality differences.
Matt is self-described as a pain in the ass and stubborn, and his family members agree. Mike is known as a bit more easy going.
“He’s probably -- I mean, it’s not probably, he is easier to deal with than I am for sure,” Matt said, grinning, as the brothers sat together -- bantering and ribbing each other -- at the NFL’s annual meetings in March in Phoenix.
Both take pride in their hair, neither deferring to the other as having the best coif. Though -- spoiler alert! -- their parents might have better hair than either of them.
Now, the eighth-year coach of the Packers and first-year coach of the Cardinals, Matt and Mike, respectively, are only the fourth brother duo in NFL history to be named head coaches after Jon and Jay Gruden, John and Jim Harbaugh and Al and Ted Nesser.
On Friday, their families will gather at Denny and Kristi’s home -- they relocated nearly four years ago from Michigan -- that sits in the shadow of Lambeau Field, before walking a few minutes to the stadium to watch Matt and Mike face off in a final preseason tuneup (8 p.m. ET) before each of their teams open the 2026 regular season on Sept. 13.
Raised by parents who were teachers and coaches, it’s little surprise that both Matt and Mike forged similar paths.
But when asked if he could have ever foreseen that one day both he and his younger brother would earn titles as NFL head coaches?
“I’d say, ‘You’re full of s---,’” Matt said. “It is pretty surreal.”
FOR A FIRST GRADE student, there’s hardly a more anticipated decision in the school year than what to bring for show-and-tell.
For 7-year-old Matt, the decision was easy: his new baby brother, Mikey. So, on a spring morning, Kristi packed up baby Mikey and took him to school for Matt to share with his classmates.
“He was very, very proud that this is his baby brother,” Kristi recalled.
Matt and Mike’s age gap spared their parents from some of the rigors of raising two active boys.
“There was never any shoving, yelling,” Kristi said. There was no sibling rivalry. There really weren’t any issues at all, except this one time. Matt was pretty irritated with Mikey. Matt was 16, Mikey was 9. Matt said, ‘Well, he shows me no respect.’"
Kristi looked at Matt and started laughing.
“He’s 9,” she told him.
“That is the only thing that I can really remember him ever saying, because they really did not argue,” Kristi said. “There was too much age difference there.”
“He was the best,” Matt said about Mike. “Just wanted to be around, and he used to get me in trouble all the time because I was the older brother, and he would kind of just needle me a little bit. And of course, I took the bait and would put him in his place, and my parents would always get mad at me saying that I needed to be more mature and accepting of it.”
What would Mike needle him about?
“I just wanted to hang out,” Mike said. “He just didn’t want me by. That’s all true for sure, and what else is true is he would get the brunt of it from Mom and Dad, particularly Mom.”
Matt and Mike grew up with their dad busy coaching. Denny spent two decades as a Central Michigan football assistant before coaching and teaching at Mount Pleasant High, where Kristi also taught and coached track and cheerleading.
“Dad was always coaching,” Matt said. “[Mom] was there in the morning and she would be the one to, you know, tuck us in to go to bed.”
Matt and Mike spent their days playing outside. Kristi would take them with her to the grocery store, where she would run into what felt like most of the community. Mike was tagging along as Matt went to his various practices. And they spent a lot of time at various football fields rooting for their dad’s teams.
But one of Mike’s most memorable moments was with the band.
“He followed the marching band in the stadium and play his little whatever, drums or trombone or whatever it was,” Matt said, smiling because this is his favorite story of his little brother.
“I think I was in the newspaper like at 4 years old playing the -- it wasn’t even a drum at one point. It was just like an old coffee tin or something like that because, again, parents were teachers,” Mike said.
Matt interrupted: “We got video of this.”
Kristi gave her boys quote books and instilled in them the power of positive thinking. And even when the boys wouldn’t want to hear it, she would keep going, knowing that they were listening.
“The best coach in the family,” Matt said of his mom.
“She has had a huge influence on how we go about our business,” Mike said.
The dynamic shifted when Matt left to play quarterback at Saginaw Valley State, located about an hour from Mount Pleasant. As a sixth grader, Mike went with his parents to watch his big brother play. A few years later, as a graduate assistant at Central Michigan, Matt repaid the investment and made time to support his little brother.
MATT FACETIMED MIKE, who initially didn’t want to pick up because he was busy inside the mobile telephone store.
But his brother got him to step outside, before breaking the news.
“I’m like, ‘Dude... I got the job!” recalled Matt, who went on to describe seeing Mike on the screen jump up and down and exclaim, “It’s the F’ing Packers. The F’ing Packers!”
The Packers hired LaFleur, after 16 years climbing the coaching ranks, as their head coach in January 2019.
“That’s one moment that I’ll always remember that we have together,” Matt said.
For Kristi and Denny, Matt made sure both were sitting down when he delivered the good news.
“What he said was, ‘I got it,’ and I thought it was the second interview,” Denny recalled. “It’s a good thing we sat down, because that just floored us. We were overwhelmed.”
Seven years after that video call inside the store, Mike delivered the family his own bit of news.
“I called him right away,” Mike said. “I said, ‘We cannot call mom and dad. And he ends up saying, well, when we do tell mom and dad, let’s all FaceTime together. And I said, ‘Dude, I’m going to FaceTime them. You can stay out of this one for a minute.”
“I just wanted to be a part of this, you know?” Matt quipped.
When the call came in, Mike’s parents were expecting to hear that his interviews had gone well. Again, they weren’t expecting the news Mike delivered, though Denny acknowledged, “We sat down for that call, too.”
It was Sunday afternoon at 4. “He goes, ‘Well, Mom, I got the job,’” Kristi recalled. “Can you be [in Phoenix] tomorrow?”
From Green Bay, the LaFleur family scrambled, including Matt. They all made it to Mike’s introduction as the Cardinals head coach on Feb. 3.
For the brothers, their coaching paths are similar. For their parents, it’s a path they could see coming, though it still has held some surprises.
Denny acknowledged that when Matt first got into the profession he thought, “Oh, you idiot,” chuckling, knowing the rigors of the job in the pro ranks.
What about Kristi? “I just thought that they’d end up probably coaching collegiately like their dad did, you know. So was I surprised by it? No. I wasn’t.”
Both brothers spent time as offensive assistants at small schools. Matt’s break came in 2008, when his college roommate, Robert Saleh (now the Tennessee Titans head coach), offered him a job with the Houston Texans.
Matt accepted and was introduced to then-Texans offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. Six years later, Shanahan became the Cleveland Browns offensive coordinator and called Matt to ask if his younger brother would be interested in a job. “Yeah,” Matt told Shanahan. “He’ll be there tomorrow.”
Matt became an offensive coordinator in 2017 under Sean McVay in Los Angeles, and six years later, Mike held the same title under McVay.
What made them believe they could become NFL head coaches?
“I never thought about it, to be honest with you,” Matt said. “The pinnacle for me was always Central Michigan.”
AHEAD OF HIS coaching debut in the Pro Football Hall of Fame game on Aug. 6, Matt appeared on the NBC broadcast via videoconference to wish his little brother Mikey good luck.
For any parent, the sibling exchange probably would have brought a tear to their eye.
“You’ve earned this op, go let it rip, have fun,” Matt said on the broadcast. “I’m proud of you buddy. Love you, man.”
Said Mike: “Love you too, dude.”
Stubborn Matt, showed his sensitive side. His little brother, almost welling up by the end of this very public moment, did too.
The exchange put an exclamation on a fact Denny mentioned months earlier.
“They’re best friends,” he said. “And that’s the best way to put it.”
