GREEN BAY – A Hollywood screenwriter couldn't have scripted it, nor could Denny LaFleur ever have predicted it.
But as the lifelong football coach stepped onto the Nitschke Field sideline on Wednesday, LaFleur was hit with a wave of emotion as his oldest son, Matt, led the Packers out from one direction and his younger son, Mike, brought the Arizona Cardinals from the other.
There they were. Two kids from Mount Pleasant, Mich., third-generation coaches, guiding the NFL's oldest and most recognizable football teams for a joint practice in Titletown.
"It's surreal," said Denny LaFleur before Wednesday's practice. "But I feel this way: They've earned it. They worked their butts off and ever since they were little kids as they grew up, they were on the sideline when I was coaching."
Coaching runs deep in the LaFleur family bloodlines. Matt's and Mike's grandfather, Bob Barringer, coached football at Kalamazoo Loy Norrix High School, while their mom, Kristi, coached track, and competitive cheerleading at Mount Pleasant High School. She was inducted into the school's athletic hall of fame in 2023.
Denny coached for more than two decades at Central Michigan before finishing his career as a physical education teacher and football coach at Mount Pleasant.
The brothers' passion for sports began in that high school, but Denny and Kristi never pushed Matt and Mike in any specific direction. The only thing they asked of their children was not to give up on whichever sport they chose.
The approach sprouted two successful football careers. Matt walked on at Western Michigan before a record-setting run playing quarterback at NCAA Division II Saginaw Valley State. Mike played quarterback and safety at Division III Elmhurst (Ill.) College.
After graduation, there was no question what came next.
"Growing up in our household, you knew no better," Matt LaFleur said. "My dad was a coach. My mom was a coach. My grandfather was a coach. We just come from a family of coaches. Whatever path we were going to go on, I think we always knew that's what we were going to do."
Despite their nearly eight-year difference in age, Matt took a vested interest in his little brother's playing career. Mike fondly remembers how Matt would make the hour drive during his senior year at Saginaw Valley to watch Mike's JV games.
It was a small gesture that meant everything to Mike, the self-described "annoying little brother" who closely clung to Matt's coattails growing up.
"He came home every Thursday night, any home game he could, to watch me," Mike LaFleur said. "You could almost feel by then, more than brother, but (also a) best friend."
The LaFleur brothers had a lifelong desire to follow their father's path to the football sidelines. They did it literally as children and Mike recalls Matt once telling him how his ultimate goal was to coach quarterbacks at CMU.
Family and football meant everything to Denny, in that order. Once his kids were in high school, Denny sometimes arranged his own travel from road trips to make it back to watch Matt's and Mike's high school games.
"That's probably why I got fired," Denny deadpanned. "I was supposed to be on the bus."
After his run at Saginaw Valley State, Matt broke into the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant at CMU in 2004. In fact, one of the prevailing reasons Matt took that job was because he was able to watch Mike's high school games.
Professionally, CMU was a transformative time in Matt's life as he was introduced to fellow graduate assistant Robert Saleh, who's now the head coach the Tennessee Titans.
The two became best of friends. When Saleh landed a quality control job with the Houston Texans, he put in a word for LaFleur with then-head coach Gary Kubiak.
In 2008, Kubiak hired LaFleur as a quality control assistant and an unexpected coaching seed was planted in NFL soil.
"(Matt's) hardest worker I've ever been around," Mike LaFleur said. "If he can find a 25th hour in the day, he would. That's just something I've always looked up (to). He's always going to be authentically himself, unapologetic. He's going to pour it into these players and he's going to pour it into this organization."
The opportunity in Houston introduced Saleh and LaFleur to Kyle Shanahan, the son of the legendary Denver Broncos coach and a bit of prodigy himself.
In 2010, Matt followed the Shanahans to Washington after Kyle's father Mike was hired as its new head coach. Three years after that, Kyle Shanahan brought Mike with him to Cleveland as an intern after he was hired as offensive coordinator.
It was actually Matt who informed Mike, Davidson's offensive coordinator at the time, that he was joining Shanahan on the Browns' coaching staff.
Shanahan called Matt, already headed to Notre Dame to coach quarterbacks on Brian Kelly's staff, to tell him he needed Mike in Cleveland on Monday.
It was nearly 10 p.m. local on Sunday at the time. Big brother immediately called little brother to inform Mike he's going with Shanahan, and a game of telephone quickly ensued.
"I thought I heard him say he was going with him," Mike said. "I'm like, 'But you're going to Notre Dame?' And he says, 'No, you're going.' I said, 'Seriously?'"
Matt went to Notre Dame, Mike took a pay cut to follow Shanahan to Cleveland, and one year later all three reunited on Dan Quinn's coaching staff in Atlanta – Shanahan as the Falcons' offensive coordinator, Matt as quarterbacks coach and Mike as an offensive assistant.
"(Mike) definitely heard a lot from me, and then he had Kyle on top of that," said Matt with a smile. "Kyle's hard on everybody, but I think that's why he has been so successful, because he demands a lot out of you, and you're always trying to please him and get his approval. But it was always a compounding effect, because if Mike screwed something up, he'd get mad at me, and then I'd go get mad at Mike and then he'd get mad at Mike, but I think there was a lot of great lessons along the way."
And success. That two-year stretch ended with the trio coaching in Super Bowl LI together before another former Washington assistant, Sean McVay, hired Matt as his offensive coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams.
Shanahan was hired as San Francisco's head coach that same offseason, with Mike joining him as passing game coordinator.
Matt might have helped Mike get his foot in the NFL doorway, but hard work and authenticity have led to Mike steadily climbing the coaching ladder over the past 12 years.
"We didn't grow up in the NFL. Mount Pleasant wasn't an NFL town," Mike LaFleur said. "It was a MAC town. And if it wasn't a MAC town, it was Michigan and Michigan State. (The NFL) was never part of the thought process."
As much as the two brothers dreamed about one day leading their own NFL teams, the possibility of one – let alone both – achieving that goal was remote to say the least.
But the first domino fell in 2019 when the Packers hired Matt LaFleur as their 15th head coach after a successful run coordinating offenses with the Los Angeles Rams and Tennessee Titans.
Six years after hiring Matt in L.A., McVay tabbed Mike for the same offensive coordinator position in 2023. The move raised the younger LaFleur's profile and helped catapult him to becoming a top coaching candidate in this year's hiring cycle.
On Feb. 1, 2026, the LaFleurs became just the third brotherly duo in NFL history to simultaneously hold head-coaching positions, joining Jim and John Harbaugh and Jon and Jay Gruden.
While the entire LaFleur family was on hand for Mike's introductory news conference, nobody's smile was wider than Matt's.
"I am proud of him. I think he's done a great job," Matt LaFleur said. "He's true to who he is. He's a great human being, a great father, I think he's got an exceptional football mind, and I think he does things the right way."
The LaFleur put in a request with the NFL to face one another during the preseason, which allowed them to then schedule Wednesday's joint practice.
In retirement, Denny spends quite a bit of time at Packers practices. He jokes how Matt gets on him during the few occasions he isn't able to be there.
Earlier this week, Matt joked his parents are likely to look like "a Christmas tree" on gameday with all the green and red that Denny and Kristi will be wearing in support of their children.
With both Matt's and Mike's family in attendance Wednesday, Denny splitting his allegiance by wearing a Packers visor and watch and a red polo shirt and Cardinals wristband.
"People always say, 'You must be proud of your kids,'" Denny said. "I say, 'Do you have kids?' If you do, you're proud of your own kids, you're proud of what they do. Ours just happen to be in sports, and its entertainment. Our kids, we're able to experience all the things that they do, plus more, and it's been a blessing."
The signs of sibling rivalry could be seen during the planning of the joint practice. On Monday, Matt said Mike has been "quick to criticize everything" he puts in the schedule but was nice getting to work against a family member you can trust.
Nxt up comes the preseason finale on Friday when Matt LaFleur will lead his Packers out of the home tunnel at Lambeau Field while Mike LaFleur does the same with the Cardinals through the south-end entrance befitting the visiting team.
It's something the two brothers couldn't have ever imagined as children. But through hard work, sacrifice and a bit of good fortune, that dream has now manifested itself into reality.
"I think it's gonna be pretty special," Matt LaFleur said. "Certainly, always going to prioritize the Green Bay Packers but if there is another team in the National Football League that I'll be rooting for, it will be the Arizona Cardinals."
-AZCardinals.com senior writer Darren Urban contributed to this story.
