The Green Bay Packers made their first new hire to the supporting staff for new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, and it is a big one. With the team on the hunt for a new defensive backs coach to fill the vacancy created with Ryan Downard’s departure to Miami, they are bringing aboard a coach who has multiple years of experience as a defensive coordinator.
That individual is Bobby Babich, who served as the Buffalo Bills’ DC for the past two years. According to Tom Pelissero of NFL Network, Babich is coming aboard the Packers staff with the titles of secondary coach and defensive pass game coordinator.
If Babich’s name sounds familiar to Packers fans, there is good reason for it. He interviewed for the DC job in Green Bay two years ago, but took the Bills job instead, getting a promotion from his prior position as Buffalo’s linebackers coach; the Packers then hired Jeff Hafley one day later.
Babich does have a deep background coaching defensive backs, however. He was almost exclusively a DBs coach prior to his two years coaching linebackers in Buffalo, having served as the Bills’ safeties coach for four seasons from 2018 to 2021. He also has experience coaching DBs with the Cleveland Browns, serving as assistant DBs coach under head coach Mike Pettine, who would eventually become the Packers’ defensive coordinator.
The titles Babich will hold in Green Bay raise a question about the future of Derrick Ansley, Green Bay’s current defensive pass game coordinator. Ansley has held that position in Green Bay for the last two years, but this news suggests that he will either be taking a different role under Gannon or may be departing Green Bay for a new job elsewhere.
Green Bay still needs to find a replacement for one major hole on the coaching staff: the linebackers coach. Sean Duggan is joining Hafley and Downard in Miami, and one candidate to watch is Nick Rallis, Gannon’s former defensive coordinator in Arizona.