The A Team: Plan may or may not come together, but Packers have clear vision

No teams enters the season perfectly formed and while Green Bay had weaknesses in 2023, the Packers had a clear and obvious plan for addressing them.

When Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst identifies a problem, he often throws multiple resources at it. Sometimes, the results yield dividends that would make Warren Buffett proud like the gutsy move to pay Za’Darius and Preston Smith before drafting Rashan Gary with the 12th overall pick. Then there’s the Day 3 receiver draft frenzy that wound up with just one legitimate NFL player. Still, the Packers and their top football executive believe in a volume approach, and whether or not it works in 2024, they have a path to be better everywhere they were weak in 2023.

Before the personnel changed, the defensive coordinator did. Head coach Matt LaFleur surprised many with the hiring of Jeff Hafley, but the now-former Boston College head coach has impressed when explaining his vision for the Packers defense. While Hafley hasn’t been an NFL DC before, he coached defensive backs in the league for seven seasons, most notably under Robert Saleh.

Though fan and media excitement often proves to be a poor gauge of future success, we have seen coaching hires that won the press conference fail over and over in the NFL. Cheeseheads were happy to see Mike Pettine go even if Joe Barry never won hearts and minds as the replacement hire. He wasn’t Pettine. Good enough.

Except it wasn’t.

We can’t know what Hafley will be as an NFL defensive coordinator. He’s only been a DC once in his career, and it was for one season at Ohio State. Hafley was so effective at turning around the Buckeyes defense that it got him hired at Boston College.

With Barry, he was running someone else’s defense, one that wasn’t his design or specialty. LaFleur hired him to be a stand-in for Brandon Staley, the en-vogue defensive mind in NFL circles. That failed. Hafley has a proprietary vision for what a defense ought to look like. The design borrows from the Saleh schemes but evolved and adapted to the changing football landscape during Hafley’s time in Chestnut Hill.