GREEN BAY – One of the qualities that made DeMarcus Covington attractive to the Green Bay Packers as their new defensive line coach was his work in the varied defenses deployed by former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
Coach Matt LaFleur and defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley fired Jason Rebrovich early in the offseason after the Packers’ defensive line underachieved in 2024, especially rushing the passer. Among other things, former first-round pick Lukas Van Ness had only three sacks in 17 games in his second season in the NFL, and Rashan Gary, the team’s best outside rusher, dipped from nine sacks in 2023 to 7.5 last year.
In Hafley’s first and only news conference of the offseason May 12, he said he was acquainted with Covington from having attended occasional Patriots practices while Hafley was head coach at Boston College, and the Patriots staff having done the same at Boston College.
Covington worked in several roles in his seven seasons coaching for Belichick — as a coaching assistant in 2017-18, outside linebackers coach in ’19, and defensive line coach from ’20-23. Though Belichick’s base scheme was a 3-4, he was known for running the gamut of defensive fronts and looks, and changing his game plans radically from week to week.
“I like the fact that (Covington) can coach a bunch of different techniques,” Hafley said. “He’s been involved with a lot of different fronts. I love his demeanor, I love the way he coaches, I love the relationship he has with his players. We did our homework on him.”
Last season, Covington was defensive coordinator for Jerod Mayo, who replaced Belichick. But Mayo and his staff were fired after only one season.
“Very, very smart, big-picture guy,” Hafley said of Covington. “Has been a coordinator, so he can bring some new ideas, some fresh ideas. I’m big on trying to stay ahead of things, right? So he brings some of that from their scheme, maybe some stuff we can add in that fits what we do. He to me felt like a great hire, great person, character. I’m glad he’s here. I think he’s done a really good job. I’ve sat in a bunch of those meetings now, he’s really good teacher, he’s got a great progression on how he teaches.”
Edgerrin Cooper is pumped up for an encore
The Packers are looking for big things from Edgerrin Cooper after his strong rookie season, and Hafley said the second-year linebacker has added noticeable weight this offseason and is up to nearly 240 pounds.
Last year Cooper was listed at 229 pounds. He’s the Packers’ most talented defensive player and finished sixth in the voting for NFL defensive rookie of the year.
Cooper had a hip injury that limited his practice time in training camp and contributed to a slow start last season, then missed three games later in the year because of a hamstring injury.
“When you see him now, he looks different,” Hafley said. “He’s bigger now. I mean, he’s got to be close to 240 pounds. This is Year 2 for him, he knows what it’s going to take, he knows what he has to do now to stay healthy. Because as much as we talked about not having him on the field last year, he was injured quite a bit where he missed a lot of time and didn’t practice and couldn’t play. Now he knows what it’s going to take to stay healthy in this long season. You can tell he dedicated that time and took care of his body and changed his body.”
Jeff Hafley saw big improvement in defense in Year 1
In his first season as defensive coordinator, Hafley’s defense finished No. 6 in the NFL in fewest points allowed, No. 5 in fewest yards and No. 9 in defensive passer rating (88.5).
“The thing I’m most proud of, I do believe we got better, and I think we played our best football late in the season,” Hafley said. “That was the most important thing to me. Year 1 you’re figuring out the system, figuring out the players, can we get better each week? But probably the biggest thing is, I thought we were playing really hard at the end of the year, we were really physical. We were really running to the ball. guys were playing confident, guys were communicating. I just felt like we came alive.
“That’s probably the thing — throw out the numbers, the statistics, where we were. I think we played harder than our opponents at the end of the year, and we were more physical. That’s what I’m most proud of, appreciate most, in the guys.”
Hafley said a goal this season is to get his defense playing like it did at the end of last season as soon as possible.
“So how fast can we do that?” he said. “We have guys who have played in the system, we have some new pieces we need to add. We need to evolve. We can’t just do the same things, say, ‘Here’s the playbook, this is what we’re running.’ No, we’re a different team, it’s a different year, offenses are going to evolve, we have to evolve. I would say I’d like us to be more consistent. There’s a lot of things we did well, but the consistency needs to improve.”
No T.J. Slaton, no problem?
Hafley appears to feel good about his defensive line’s ability to stop the run even though 330-pound T.J. Slaton left in free agency and was replaced by sixth-round pick Warren Brinson and perhaps undrafted rookie Nazir Stackhouse, both out of Georgia.
The Packers finished last season No. 7 in the league in fewest rushing yards allowed and No. 3 in fewest yards allowed per attempt (4.0).
“We’re pretty good on the interior,” Hafley said. “I mean, Devonte (Wyatt) and Kenny (Clark), Karl (Brooks), Colby (Wooden), all those guys inside. I feel good about our interior guys. Even take away the addition of those (rookies), hopefully we’ll get something out of them, but we’ve both pretty good guys on the inside of our defense that I’m confident we can continue to do that. If we have to change up and do some different things schematically with them we will. But we’ve got a good group in there.”
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Packers coordinator Jeff Hafley excited to see what DeMarcus Covington can bring to defense
Reporting by Pete Dougherty, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Packers News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
