GREEN BAY — Back in his first preseason as the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator in 2009, Dom Capers had no time for vanilla schemes. 

“We were kind of wild and crazy,” Capers recalled with a laugh toward the end of his nine-year tenure with the Packers.

That summer, Capers was installing his 3-4 scheme with a roster full of 4-3 defenders and two rookie first-round picks (defensive tackle B.J. Raji and outside linebacker Clay Matthews). Believing his guys needed to run his stuff in games to be ready for the season, he didn’t play it close to the vest.

Instead, with head coach Mike McCarthy’s blessing, he ran a number of his favorite fire-zone blitzes, played various mixed-and-matched coverages and managed to tick off an opposing offensive coordinator or two in the process.

“I had [gotten] some funny comments,” Capers recalled. “Obviously, in the preseason, that’s tough because [opposing offenses] can’t prepare for it. It’s different when you get into the regular season and you have so much tape to look at and time to prepare. Preseason, that’s a tough thing to go against.”

In their preseason opener that year, the Packers shut out the Cleveland Browns, 17-0, at Lambeau Field. The Browns managed just 191 yards of offense — even with Raji, Matthews and the Packers dynamic cornerback duo of Charles Woodson and Al Harris not playing — turned the ball over four times, gave up three sacks and converted just 3 of 11 third downs. (Even with a third-year left tackle who’d eventually find his way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame — Wisconsin’s Joe Thomas.)

Fast forward to Thursday night’s 28-9 loss in Pittsburgh, where Jonathan Gannon debuted as the Packers’ fourth post-Capers coordinator — after Mike Pettine (2018-’20), Joe Barry (2021-’23) and Jeff Hafley (2024-’25) — showed more of his playbook than Pettine, Barry and Hafley did in their first preseasons.

And head coach Matt LaFleur was fine with that.

“That’s always a balance each and every year, especially when you’ve got the new scheme coming in,” LaFleur explained. “What do you want to show? What don’t you want to show? I don’t think it was too souped up.”

It definitely was nowhere close to what Capers did that summer of 2009.

But Gannon did send inside linebacker Zaire Franklin on an A-gap blitz during the opening drive, and later safety/nickelback Kitan Oladapo chased down Will Howard for a sack on a blitz when Gannon put eight players at the line of scrimmage and sent five rushers.

“It’s a healthy blend. And Matt’s been awesome about it,” Gannon said of LaFleur allowing him be as aggressive as he deems necessary with play calls. “I want to get our guys comfortable with certain concepts that we are going to use week-in and week-out. Now, is that going to be an Oladapo blitz [in] Week 5? I don’t know that. Is the coverage structure going to be the same Week 2? I don’t know that.

“But we need to be able to do those things. I do want to put them in those situations so that we can coach off of it and learn from it. I was once told, ‘A really good defense, the offense knows what’s coming [and it] doesn’t matter.

“We don’t want to show everything, but I thought our guys handled the menu for preseason [game No.] 1 like they should have for the most part, and did a good job.”

Linebackers coach Sam Siefkes, who worked for Gannon in 2023 and 2024 when Gannon was the Arizona Cardinals head coach, said Gannon’s approach is about “trying to go into the preseason doing the things that we’ll do throughout the course of the season” while also running basic comments that won’t give the Minnesota Vikings, the Packers’ opening-day opponent Sept. 13 in Minneapolis, too much insight into their game plan.

“I think that’s the balancing act for JG,” Siefkes said. “Being able to have an understanding of, ‘OK let’s give our guys a chance to have success and make some plays’ while also being able to evaluate them in other situations as well.”

What Gannon decides to do in Friday’s second preseason game at Denver remains to be seen, but whatever approach he takes, LaFleur said he’ll be supportive of it.

“I’m not going to micromanage what he calls,” LaFleur said. “Certainly, you want to give your guys a chance to go out there and make plays. You don’t want to just sit back and play three deep or quarters on every snap You’ve got to pick and choose your moments of when to be aggressive.”

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