Short answer is no–the Pope is not God so we are not bound to his every opinion and whim. When he teaches the Church as the supreme teach of all the faithful we are to give his teachings a certain kind of deference and respect in the manner the Pope intends. For example, if he intends to definitively proclaim an irreformable truth revealed by God, we must accept that proposition with divine faith. If he intends to just give us some food for thought, without an obligation toward it, then that’s what we do. His intention can generally be known by the kind of document he uses, his manner of speaking, etc. There’s no indication random comments need to be treated as anything other than that.
One thing Pope Francis does well in his encyclicals and exhortations where he teaches the whole Church is lay out his intentions early on–there is always a paragraph or two where he lays out his plan for the document and his intentions for each section. For example, in his exhortation Evangelii Gaudium he has a section entitled “Scope and Limitations of this Exhortation” where he says he is merely offering “guidelines,” not intending to provide anything definitive (see paragraphs 16 and 17 of that document). Others he frames as invitations to dialogue or discernment for some parts and doctrinal restatements for other parts. Obviously, our response to these intentions are much different than if he said he intended to provide the definitive judgment on a particular dogmatic controversy, which he has not done as far as I can tell.
