A familiar face is back with the Packers. Coach Matt LaFleur revealed today that former offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett is back with the organization in “an analyst role for our defense,” per Albert Breer of TheMMQB.
Hackett was once one of the bright, young offensive minds in the NFL. After cutting his teeth as the Bills offensive coordinator, he took the same role with the Jaguars in 2016. Jacksonville had a pair of dismal seasons during Hackett’s three years on the sideline, but their one successful campaign saw the offense finish the year ranked fifth in points scored.
He caught on with LaFleur’s new staff in Green Bay ahead of the 2019 season. Working alongside Aaron Rodgers, Hackett helped guide the Packers offense to three relatively successful seasons. This included a 2020 season where Green Bay led the league in points scored, and the team followed that up with a 10th-place showing in 2021. Rodgers also won back-to-back MVPs while playing in Hackett’s system.
That performance helped earn the coach his first (and, at the moment, only) head coaching gig in Denver, but things couldn’t have gone much worse. After guiding the Broncos to a 4-11 start, Hackett was fired from his role, making him only the fifth head coach since 1970 to not make it through a full season with his new club. Still, his relationship with Rodgers helped get him the OC job with the Jets in 2023.
We’re all familiar with how that went. Rodgers’ season-ending injury in 2023 helped buy Hackett another season, but when Jeff Ulbrich took over as interim HC following Robert Saleh‘s firing in 2024, the OC was stripped of his play-calling duties. Predictably, Hackett was let go by the end of the campaign.
Now, he’ll resurface in a familiar spot in Green Bay. It’s interesting that he’s been hired for a defensive role, although it’s not particularly rare in today’s day and age. Just last year, the Packers made a similar hire with Saleh, as the ousted Jets coach was hired to provide a defensive viewpoint to the team’s offense.
“I just think it’s a fresh perspective,” LaFleur said (via ESPN’s Rob Demovsky). “You kind of, especially when you take a defensive guy and put them on offense and vice versa, and offensive guy and defense, it gives you a little different lens to see it through and talk through. And so, he’s sitting in with all our, with our defensive staff, and he’s been in the linebacker room and kind of just going through the film and, you know, gives them a good offensive perspective.”