It’s never too late to come back home. That’s applicable in life to reconnecting with family and for former Green Bay Packers assistant coaches to return to Matt LaFleur’s staff.
LaFleur has hired former offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett back to his staff, but to the opposite side of the football as a defensive assistant. Hackett was LaFleur’s first offensive coordinator in Green Bay in 2019, working under the play-calling head coach for three seasons from 2019 to 2021.
Those years involved the Packers making consecutive NFC championship game appearances (2019-2020) and the NFC divisional round (2021) by winning an NFL record 13 games in three consecutive seasons. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers experienced a return to peak performance in that time, winning back-to-back NFL MVPs in 2020 and 2021. The Packers offense averaged 27.2 points per game in that span, the fifth-most in the NFL.
Hackett was famously charged with putting the red zone portion of the gameplan together, which he famously referred to as “the gold zone” in a call back to Austin Powers. Green Bay’s 67.2% red zone touchdown rate from 2019 to 2021 was the second-best in the entire league behind only the Derrick Henry-led Tennessee Titans (71.2%).
Following that success, the Denver Broncos hired Hackett to be their head coach on the heels of acquiring quarterback Russell Wilson in a trade with the Seattle Seahawks. His tumultuous tenure ended before the conclusion of the 2022 season, with the Broncos firing him after a 4-11 start. Hackett reunited with Rodgers as his New York Jets coordinator the last two seasons (2023 and 2024) before reconnecting with LaFleur.
Hackett will be in a nearly identical role this season as Luke Getsy was for Green Bay last season. Getsy was LaFleur’s quarterbacks coach from 2019-2021 before working as an offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears (2022-2023) and Las Vegas Raiders (2024). LaFleur brought Getsy back after the Raiders fired him in Week 9 last season. Getsy returns to the offensive side of the ball in 2025 as a senior offensive assistant for Green Bay.
“We’ve got kind of a history of this with guys that are kind out there and certainly, he’s a guy that I really respect, and we’ve had a lot of great times together,” LaFleur said of Hackett on Thursday. “And he’s kind of coming in and doing an analyst role for our defense. Last year, we used Getsy in a similar role as that.”
Offensively, the Packers were a strong unit in 2024, finishing in the top 10 of the league in both scoring offense (27.1 points per game, eighth) and red zone offense (59.4% red zone touchdown rate, 10th). Defensively, Green Bay was top 10 in scoring defense (19.9 points per game allowed, sixth-best) under new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, but it could use some help in the red zone, Hackett’s former specialty in his first Packers go around.
The Packers defense allowed a 60% red zone touchdown rate, which ranked 20th in the league in 2024. Hackett giving Green Bay’s defense some pointers inside the 20 could turn out to be quite beneficial. LaFleur noted Hackett worked with linebackers, typically the quarterbacks of the defense, to start off his second Packers tour of duty.
Hackett will be doing the reverse of what his former Jets boss, Robert Saleh, did in Green Bay last season when LaFleur brought the ex-New York head coach in after he was let go to provide a defensive point of view to his offense in 2024. The San Francisco 49ers hired Saleh to be their defensive coordinator for 2025.
“I just think it’s a fresh perspective,” LaFleur said. “Especially when you take a defensive guy and put them on offense and vice versa, and offensive guy on 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. He’ll [Hackett] be in and out throughout the course of the year.”
The first time LaFleur saw this practice utilized was when he was a member of then-head coach Dan Quinn’s Atlanta Falcons coaching staff in 2016 when Raheem Morris was moved from being Atlanta’s defensive passing game coordinator to wide receivers coach. That season, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan earned NFL MVP honors en route to leading Atlanta to an NFC championship. Atlanta notoriously blew a 28-3 in a 34-28 Super Bowl LI overtime loss against the New England Patriots.
LaFleur was the Falcons quarterbacks coach that year under offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. LaFleur, Shanahan (San Francisco 49ers), Morris (Falcons) and Quinn (Washington Commanders) are all NFL head coaches today.
“It really happened back when I was in Atlanta in 2016 with Raheem Morris. We moved him from defensive backs, I think he was our passing game coordinator by title at the time, and moved him over to offense as a receiver coach,” LaFleur said. “I just thought it was, what a cool perspective to get the other side of it.”
Perhaps Hackett providing the other side perspective to the Packers defense, particularly in the red zone, could be what Green Bay needs to break through in the postseason for its first conference championship game appearance with starting quarterback Jordan Love.
