The Packers made a splash hire at defensive coordinator, scooping former Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon to fill the void left behind by Jeff Hafley’s departure to become the Miami Dolphins’ nead coach.
For head coach Matt LaFleur and Green Bay, it’s the chance to bring in a coordinator who helped power a Super Bowl run in 2022 and import fresh ideas to a defense that is loaded with a mixture of established veteran stars and young ascending talent at all three levels.
Packers’ Matt LaFleur a big Jonathan Gannon fan
When the Packers squared off against the Cardinals this past season, LaFleur spoke glowingly about Gannon, whom Green Bay hired this week.
“The genius in what they do is they don’t give you looks that are easy, that you can tell, ‘Oh, this is a man coverage look,'” LaFleur told reporters. “They disguise the look well. It wasn’t until after we motioned that it was like, ‘Oh, it looks like it’s man.’ So, give credit to them.”
It’s easy to envision Gannon moving safety Xavier McKinney around the field like a chess piece on a chess board, or deploying Micah Parsons as a hand-in-the-dirt edge rusher or standing him up as a linebacker, tossing different looks and disguised coverages at opposing quarterbacks and offenses.
If Gannon is able to replicate the success he forged in Philadelphia, helping edge rusher Haason Reddick have the most prolific seasons of his career and building out a defense that was the backbone of an Eagles Super Bowl run, the pieces the Packers have in place could be in for a big leap forward in 2026.
Back in 2024, LaFLeur needed just nine words to sum up his opinion of Gannon, from afar.
“Gannon, I think, does a hell of a job,” LaFleur told reporters, after a Packers victory.
