GREEN BAY — Kevin Peoples isn’t bragging, and he isn’t looking for credit.

DeMarcus Covington is the coach he is — and, to hear Peoples tell it, the future NFL head coach he’s destined to become — because of who he is, not because of what he learned from Peoples all those years ago.

That said, Peoples was there when Covington’s coaching career began at Alabama-Birmingham in the early 2010s, and he was there when Blazers head coach Garrick McGee told Covington — a former Division I-AA wide receiver at Samford — that his graduate assistant gig would be on the opposite side of the football, alongside Peoples on the defensive line.

“I know he was disappointed,” Peoples recalled.

Covington, now the Green Bay Packers defensive line coach, uses a different adjective.

“I was pissed,” Covington said during his first Q&A session with the Green Bay media corps last week, during a break in Phase II of the Packers’ offseason program. “I was like, ‘How’s a guy like me going to coach D-line?’”

Funny, that was one of the questions the 36-year-old Covington got last week, too — although no one was questioning his credentials anymore.

After eight seasons with the New England Patriots — seven of them under legendary coach Bill Belichick — coaching linebackers and the defensive line before serving as the Pats’ defensive coordinator last season, his reputation had preceded him to Green Bay.

“He’s a guy that I got a little exposure to when we played against New England a couple of years ago [in preseason] and practiced against them,” head coach Matt LaFleur said. “I know he’s held in pretty high regard around the league, and I really like the demeanor that he’s coming in with. He’s a technician, knows ball — knows a lot of ball. I think having that coordinator background is big as well.”

Added defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, who first met Covington when, as the head coach at Boston College, he’d occasionally take his staff to Belichick’s practices: “We interviewed a lot of guys, a lot of really good candidates as soon as the season was done — Matt, myself and a few other coaches. DeMarcus, how he has taught in a lot of different systems and a lot of different schemes … I love the way he coaches, I love the relationship he has with his players. We did our homework on him.

“[He’s a] very, very smart, big-picture guy. He has been a coordinator, so he can bring some new ideas, some fresh ideas. To me, he felt like a great hire.”

We’ll get back to Covington’s unusual career arc in a moment. But right now, he has a more pressing concern: Getting more out of a defensive line that underachieved last season — despite the presence of four former first-round draft picks — and got position coach Jason Rebrovich fired.

Hired in late January to replace him, it’s up to Covington to get Rashan Gary playing like an elite-level pass rusher, Lukas Van Ness and Devonte Wyatt to play up to their potential and veteran Kenny Clark to bounce back from a down season.

“We talk about three things — the start, the fight zone and the finish. So [it’s about] being effective in all those three phases,” Covington explained when asked how he intends to raise the standard of that pivotal group. “[I’m] just trying to build my roots within the D-line room, trying to implement fundamentals, techniques and also trying to learn the playbook.

“Obviously, I came in a time where it’s evaluation for self-scout, so during that time I got the opportunity to watch the 2024 season and the things that went right, went wrong, all of the above. And [I was] really able to reflect and see how we move forward.”

Which brings us back to Covington’s approach to coaching, and Peoples’ influence on him.

Peoples, now at LSU working with the Tigers’ edge rushers, is going into his 33rd year of coaching, a journey that has taken him from his alma mater, NAIA’s Carroll College in Montana, to 12 other college programs and even a stint in the old XFL in 2000 with the Las Vegas Outlaws.

He only spent one year at UAB, which just happened to coincide with Covington returning to his hometown of Birmingham to serve as a graduate assistant with the Blazers.

“When you first meet DeMarcus, there’s something different, something special about him,” People explained during a telephone interview Saturday evening. “It’s hard to quantify, but he’s got a genuineness about him.

“The first time meeting him [at UAB], I know he was disappointed when he found out he was going to be on the defensive line side, but as the line coach, I could never tell. He looked like he was the most excited person in the room. He was conscientious, taking notes, doing everything. So, it’s hard to put your finger on why someone’s going to be great, but I knew it from the start.

“He cares about people. Growing up, he came from a blue-collar family, and he was able to gain experiences throughout his life that transcend ages and races and everything else. I think that’s a unique quality. And when he becomes an NFL head coach, all those past experiences are going to help him.”

But it all began at UAB, where Peoples passed on the everything he could about the fundamentals of footwork and technique and hand placement, then began sharing the finer coaching points of the position. He even had Covington do the drill work himself, working on tackling dummies and heavy bags to learn it all through repetition.

And Covington soaked up every bit of it.

“As young guy, you dive in. So, at first you have that ‘Ugh!’ moment, but then you’ve got to turn the page,” he said. “So I jumped right in — didn’t stick a toe in the water — [because] I definitely didn’t want anybody to look at me like, ‘This guy don’t know what he’s talking about.’

“When you think about coaching, coaching is teaching. And if you can get the guys to buy into what you’re saying, it’s really not about what I know, it’s about what they know and what I can get them to understand and go out there and perform. So I look at it as just being able to teach.”

Said Packers defensive backs coach Ryan Downard, who was a college DB at Eastern Michigan and now coaches the position he played: “Being in meetings with him, I think he’s a hell of a coach — in my short time with him. …  I can definitely see why he’s able to coach a different position than he played, because of his intelligence.

“There are things that I pull from experience-wise where I actually felt being in a particular position — not at this level but in general — where I feel like that’s helped my coaching. But he is a damn good coach.”

Both Peoples and Covington said there is more carryover between coaching receivers and defensive linemen than most would think, since hand fighting is crucial both for wideouts (getting off the line of scrimmage against pressing quarterbacks) and pass rushers (getting their hands on blockers so they can get up the field.

“Look at the game itself, right? If you played defensive line 30 years ago when I was growing up, the game has changed dramatically,” said Peoples, who stays in touch with Covington — but not during football season when both are busy. “Even the quarterback position. What Bart Starr played back in the day is not the same as what Aaron Rodgers played just a few years ago for the Packers. It is a totally different game than it was.

“So anybody that has the knowledge or the desire to learn, you know they can do it. And I knew it from the start [with him]. I’m not surprised, just unbelievably happy for him. It just happened faster than I thought it would.”

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