Did Matt LaFleur finally get it right with Jeff Hafley?
One of the most important storylines of the 2024 Packers season won’t actually be resolved this year. Or next year. Or perhaps even the year after that. But it represents a tantalizing data point in one of the most consequential decisions in Packers history: the move to hire Matt LaFleur.
Through the mysterious and poorly understood movement of time, we somehow find ourselves in the sixth year of the LaFleur era. It seems like just days ago that the fresh-faced former offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans arrived in Green Bay, but we’re now entering the back half of his first decade as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers.
And most of his time here has been good to very good. To borrow a descriptor coined by his predecessor, he is a highly successful football coach by just about any measure. He has won a great many games, returned the Packers to the top of the NFC North multiple times, shepherded the development of Jordan Love, and brought his team deep into playoffs in four of his five seasons at the helm. Though he’s never reached the Super Bowl, LaFleur’s Packers teams have reached at least the divisional round in four of his five years as head coach.
Yet if he’s had one shortcoming, it’s been consistent misfires among some of his coaching hires. LaFleur has had three different defensive coordinators, three different special teams coordinators, and two different offensive coordinators. It’s been quite a rotating cast of characters, and many of them have been outright bad.
Things have gone fairly well with his OC selections. Nathaniel Hackett seemed to do a good job while in Green Bay and there isn’t much reason to complain about his successor, Adam Stenavich. Rich Bisaccia, too, seems to be mostly fine as the Packers’ special teams coordinator. You could throw Mike Pettine on the “mostly fine” pile too, though he had his problems. His work with LaFleur seems to have been an arranged marriage, though, so I can’t fault LaFleur too much for that.
Beyond that, though, things get grim. Joe Barry’s tenure was a problem from the start, made worse by the fact that it was roundly criticized from the start. There was never a good reason to hire him, and nothing improved the longer he was in Green Bay.
The same is true of Sean Mennenga, who only got the Packers’ special teams coordinator job because LaFleur failed to get the coordinator he wanted the first time. Maurice Drayton, Mennenga’s successor, so thoroughly failed at the gig that he lasted just one season.
But now LaFleur has hired Jeff Hafley, who has technically never been a defensive coordinator before. He’s held the co-defensive coordinator job at Ohio State and was in practice if not in fact the defensive coordinator for Boston College, but it’s just as accurate to say he’s never held this kind of gig before in his career.
That may be a virtue, and we’ll get to Hafley a bit more in-depth in a second, but for LaFleur it’s another swing on another coordinator after a series of missteps among these all-important hires. And if there’s one black mark on LaFleur’s career (save for his back-to-back NFC Championship failings), it’s that: he hasn’t yet crushed a coordinator hire. It may not be as important as his other work as a head coach. Putting together a cohesive and dangerous offense is, by any measure, more important than who’s coordinating it, and that’s doubly true for his work developing the Packers’ deep roster of young talent. But it’s still important, especially when it comes to the development aspect of this roster. How many of the Packers’ talented youngsters languished under Joe Barry? Quay Walker and Devonte Wyatt come to mind, and they’re certainly not the only ones.
LaFleur has to be right on this call, and Hafley better hope he was. Because to return to the above aside, this is a watershed moment in Hafley’s own career. I think the days of good ol’ boys like Joe Barry and Gregg Williams getting repeat shots at premium jobs are nearly over, if they aren’t already. Teams are more aggressive than ever when it comes to their coaching staffs, quickly moving from one candidate to the next if things don’t work out. And with more attention than ever on why certain people are getting certain jobs, this could be Hafley’s only shot to get things right.
Hafley had better hope this is indeed the right time for him to make the jump to the NFL. His coaching future could depend on it. It seems strange at first blush to be thinking about Hafley’s next opportunity when he’s barely begun his work on this one, but that’s the nature of professional sports. Everything is a step toward the next thing, and Hafley’s next job will be affected by his performance in this one. Fix the Packers’ defense and maybe the nameplate outside his next office says “head coach.” Fail, and it’s probably another position coach gig — at best — with a new team in a new town.
The stakes are high for both LaFleur and Hafley, and we haven’t even talked about how each one factors into the championship window that appears to be opening in Green Bay. Both have their own role to play in that quest, and whether or not they play them well will reflect on each of their legacies.