GREEN BAY − Green Bay Press-Gazette and PackersNews columnist Pete Dougherty responded to reader questions after the Green Bay Packers hit their Week 5 bye week with a 2-1-1 record.
Following is an excerpt from last week’s mailbag. For the full story, go here.
Doug Haensel: I understand that Rich Bisaccia is high-character guy and well respected within the organization, but the special teams play has been less than spectacular and over the last few years maybe even classified as abysmal. I would have thought that making a coaching change on the bye week would have made sense. Do you agree or what is holding LaFleur back from making the change?
Dougherty: The short answer, I don’t think firing Bisaccia in-season is a good solution.
I thought the special teams were OK Bisaccia’s first three years, and a work in progress that looked pretty good going into this season with kicker Brandon McManus and punter Daniel Whelan.
But yeah, this start has been abysmal. Bisaccia is respected around the league, and he was reportedly the highest-paid special teams coach when the Packers hired him in ‘23. He was brought in to put an end to the type of catastrophic mistakes that have cost the Packers the last two weeks. They’ve violated the cardinal rule of special teams, which is first, do no harm.
But making a change at special teams coach during the season is a really, really tough thing to do, so you better be sure you have somebody on staff who you are confident will correct things.
The Packers’ assistant special teams coach is Byron Storer. He’s 43 and has been a special teams assistant in the league for 11 of the last 12 years he’s coached — he took four years off football (2014-17) to help with his family’s transportation business. Bisaccia brought him with from Las Vegas.
It would come down to how comfortable LaFleur would be promoting Storer. I don’t see how bringing in a coach off the street would be a good idea during the season. That’s just too big a change in such a complex area of the game, with so many facets (return and coverage units on punts and kickoffs, field goal and block units). According to ChatGPT, the last special teams coach fired in-season was Tennessee’s Craig Aukerman on Dec. 4, 2023. The Titans were 4-8 at the time.
I advocated firing Joe Barry late in the ‘23 season. LaFleur kept him on because he thought Barry gave his defense the best chance to succeed for the rest of the season, even though he surely knew he was going to fire Barry after the season anyway. The Packers’ defense ended up playing fairly well the final few games and helped that team beat Dallas and nearly beat San Francisco in the playoffs. LaFleur then fired Barry, but it’s hard to argue with the results of him having Barry finish the season.
Bisaccia is in his 25th season as a special teams coordinator. That’s a lot of experience in the job. I just don’t see firing him as a good in-season solution unless he’s contributing to dissension on the staff or in the locker room. I have not heard that either of those things is an issue.
Dave S from Chicago: I saw a piece on ACME Packing that put some special teams blame on LaFleur for not letting Bisaccia use his preferred ST personnel, thus inviting the exploitation of less experienced/less well trained players by the opposition. Your thoughts?
Dougherty: Thanks for sharing that, I hadn’t seen it. Interesting article by Justis Mosqueda. I’m sure there’s truth to it — that is, that LaFleur prevented Bisaccia from using players Bisaccia wanted on special teams.
For instance, I have no doubt it’s been LaFleur’s call on not using Keisean Nixon in the return game.
I don’t know if LaFleur prevented Bisaccia from using Elgton Jenkins and Karl Brooks on field-goal protection to start the game, or if the guys who were responsible for the block (Brant Banks and Luke Musgrave) had worked with the second unit in training camp and thus were the next men up with the injuries to Anthony Belton, Zach Tom and Aaron Banks.
Not saying LaFleur didn’t make that decision, just that I don’t know. If he did, though, maybe he wanted to keep the extra snaps off Jenkins, who’s had a back injury since the start of training camp. If Jenkins ended up aggravating it while blocking on an extra point, then there’d be hell to pay, because it is something just about any offensive lineman should be able to do.
Jenkins in fact got bowled over on the first extra point after he’d replaced Banks, because he did what Banks failed to do, and that was get a piece of two rushers, not just the guy directly in front of him. The two rushers hit Jenkins hard enough to pancake him, but it also slowed them enough that they didn’t come close to blocking the kick.
Regardless, the article is a great reminder that a lot of factors go into special teams play. And that the issues aren’t all necessarily on Bisaccia. Thanks for sharing the article and question.
Jim S: Are the blocked kicks lately on Coach Bisaccia not have players step inside to seal or is something else going on? Seems like kicks shouldn’t be getting blocked without an unbelievable play by the defense.
Dougherty: From what I can tell, at least from a technique (not personnel) standpoint, there were different issues with the two blocked kicks.
Against Cleveland, it was a matter of Kinnard and Jordan Morgan giving up too much push against the three rushers in front of them, which allowed Shelby Harris to block the kick. Kinnard and Morgan were overpowered and probably just didn’t get low enough.
Against Dallas, Banks was the biggest culprit from what I could tell because he didn’t do what you allude to and at least get a piece of the guy who shot the gap and blocked the kick. Jenkins blocked both guys when he replaced Banks on the next field goal. Banks blocked only the one and didn’t do anything to slow the other. Musgrave also needed to squeeze that gap a little by keeping his backside in place and not lunging at the outside rusher.
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Packers mailbag deals with reader questions about whether special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia should be fired
Reporting by Pete Dougherty, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Packers News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
