The Green Bay Packers have their next defensive coordinator. According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Matt LaFleur is hiring Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley.
The news comes out of nowhere. Among the six different reported defensive coordinator interviews that the Packers held, Hafley was not among those mentioned.
Hafley’s roots in the NFL are in the secondary. He got his first NFL coaching gig with Tampa Bay in 2012 as the assistant defensive backs coach. He was then promoted to the defensive backs coach in 2013. Hafley would fill that same role with Cleveland during the 2014 and 2015 seasons, and then San Francisco from 2016 to 2018.
In 2019, he joined the Ohio State coaching staff as co-defensive coordinator and has been the head coach of Boston College since 2020.
Boston College’s best season defensively under Hafley came in 2021. According to the team site, the Golden Eagles’ defense ranked third in passing yards. That same year, the defense ranked top 30 nationally in total defense, red zone defense, first downs allowed, third down rate, team passing efficiency and defensive touchdowns. Boston College also finished with the fewest penalties in the ACC.
In this most recent 2023 season, Boston College ranked 74th in points per game allowed at 28.3 and 64th in total yards per game surrendered. Over his head coaching career, Hafley finished 22-26, including 7-6 in 2023, leading Boston College to its first bowl appearance since 2018, which they won.
Hafley has passed on previous coaching opportunities in the NFL, wrote Thamel, but is making the jump now, in part due to the NIL and the current state of recruiting.
“He wants to go coach football again in a league that is all about football,” a source told ESPN. “College coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There’s no time to coach football anymore.
“A lot of things that he went back to college for have disappeared.”
Hafley has coached in a variety of schemes during his career and spent time coaching under current New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh when he was the defensive coordinator with San Francisco, as well as head coach Kyle Shanahan.
Justis Mosqueda of Acme Packing Co. would also note that during Hafley’s time in Cleveland, one of his assistant defensive back coaches was Bobby Babich, who the Packers also interviewed, and current Packers safeties coach Ryan Downard was also on that staff.
Thamel adds that Hafley is a “longtime” friend of Matt LaFleur’s and a longtime “admirer” of the Packers’ organization.
With Hafley as the defensive coordinator in 2019, Ohio State went from ranking 72nd in yards per play to leading the country in that category. A key teaching point of Hafley’s that season was on tackling, an area where the Packers have been inconsistent at best.
“We don’t just talk about running to the ball,” said Hafley via The Athletic. “To me, the most important thing about tackling is the approach. I got up in front of the whole team, and Ryan had me talking about tackling in front of the whole team.
“I think people spend way too much time just talking about the finish and driving your legs and wrapping up. But people put themselves in such bad positions, where they’re not even close to being in a position to make the play. Everything we do, we just talked about tracking and the angle and the approach and getting yourself in the best position to actually get yourself having a fighting chance to make the tackle. Whether we’re doing a live period or not, we talk about that on every single play.”
It is not yet known what style of defense Hafley will run in Green Bay, but for what it’s worth, Boston College did a run a 4-3, as does Salah, who Hafley last coached under on the defensive side of the ball when in the NFL. Under Hafley, Boston College ran a heavy dose of Cover-1, a far cry from how the Packers have operated.
“Some or all” of the Packers’ current defensive coaching staff could be retained under Hafley, reported Thamel.
