GREEN BAY \u2014 Derrick Ansley has waited nearly five years to coach Nate Hobbs.<\/p>\n
Ansley, now in his second season as the Green Bay Packers defensive passing-game coordinator, had just gotten a job as the Los Angeles Chargers defensive backs coach in 2021 when he took a shine to Hobbs, who wound up being chosen by the Las Vegas Raiders in the fifth round of the NFL Draft.<\/p>\n
With the Chargers facing their AFC West rivals twice a year, Ansley got to see plenty of Hobbs in the silver-and-black over the next three seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoved him then,\u201d Ansley said during the Packers\u2019 offseason program, \u201cand all he’s done is become the same player that we saw in college.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is why, with the Packers having inked Hobbs to a four-year, $48 million free-agent deal and counting on him to be a crucial, versatile piece of their secondary, Ansley is convinced that Hobbs will be exactly the guy the Packers are hoping he\u2019ll be.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I] like Hobbs a lot. Like him a lot,\u201d Ansley said. \u201cHe’s physical. He’s strong \u2014 upper body and lower body. He’s very heavy-handed. He’s got an alpha personality. He listens. [And] he’s been a good teammate to some of the younger guys, encouraging those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, he\u2019s got connections to the Packers\u2019 other two top cornerbacks in the wake of two-time All-Pro Jaire Alexander\u2019s release last month: Keisean Nixon, whom Hobbs played with in Las Vegas, and Carrington Valentine, who has trained with Hobbs in Louisville since Valentine was a 16-year-old high-schooler hoping to earn a college scholarship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve known Nate for a while,\u201d Valentine said. \u201cSo, it’s going to be fun to play with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
What makes Hobbs so valuable to the Packers is his versatility. With no true No. 1 shutdown corner on the roster, defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley wants to utilize Nixon, Valentine and Hobbs interchangeably in his system.<\/p>\n
During organized team activity practices and the mandatory minicamp last month, Hobbs sometimes lined up outside opposite Nixon in base defensive personnel, but when Hafley went to his three-cornerback nickel package, sometimes Hobbs was inside and Nixon was outside opposite Valentine, and sometimes Hobbs went outside and Nixon played inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cNate can play outside and Nate can play inside. So we\u2019re going to have him do both,\u201d Hafley said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re getting ready for free agency and you\u2019re evaluating tape, it\u2019s one thing that you love about him. He\u2019s had a lot of success inside, and I thought his tape outside was equally as good.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is competitive, he\u2019s tough, he is physical, he plays the game fast. You can tell he loves it. It just jumps off the tape. That versatility, where you can move him around and again, I\u2019m a big fan of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hobbs arrives in Green Bay having intercepted three passes and registered three sacks in 51 games (38 starts) in his four seasons with the Raiders.<\/p>\n
His physical style might have something to do with the fact that he\u2019s never played a full 17-game season, including playing only 11 games in 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n
He missed six games in 2022 with a broken hand, four games with an ankle injury in 2023 and six more games last year with an ankle injury (four games) and an illness (two games).<\/p>\n
General manager Brian Gutekunst, as he almost always does in free agency, signed Hobbs not for the production he had in Las Vegas but for what he believes Hobbs can do in Green Bay.<\/p>\n
And if the offseason program was any indication, opposing quarterbacks will find themselves confused at times by the Packers\u2019 spot-switching cornerbacks, who managed to give their own quarterback, Jordan Love, a headache or two in practice.<\/p>\n
And Hobbs is the key to that duplicity.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing a guy like Nate Hobbs, we\u2019ll see what he ends up doing, whether it\u2019s nickel or corner, but he looks good so far,\u201d Love said during OTAs. \u201cHe\u2019s a very physical corner, nickel, whatever they put him at. The more we get around him, the more we keep seeing him, he looks pretty good. It\u2019ll be interesting to see the more we get into training camp exactly how that position group pans out, who will be where. But I\u2019ve got confidence in those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
About our \u201cMost Important Packers of 2025\u201d Series: When the Packers kick off their seventh training camp under head coach Matt LaFleur on July 23, they\u2019ll do so with a host of players facing pivotal seasons. LaFleur clearly believes he has ample talent to be a Super Bowl contender \u2014 even if he didn\u2019t want to say so as the offseason program came to a close \u2014 but turning that belief into reality will require many of those players to produce at higher levels than they have in the past. This series, which began in 2010 on ESPNWisconsin.com<\/a>, examines each of those players and how the team\u2019s success hinges on their contributions. The list is compiled with input from team observers, former players and NFL sources.<\/p>\n \u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREEN BAY \u2014 Derrick Ansley has waited nearly five years to coach Nate Hobbs. Ansley, now in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,2514,2513,4247,267,27988,6,428,15122,9577,9,1004,27989,27990],"class_list":{"0":"post-183195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-greenbay","12":"tag-greenbaypackers","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-national-sports","15":"tag-national-world","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-packers","18":"tag-regional","19":"tag-shareable-stories","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-wisconsin-news","23":"tag-wisconsin-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114800319842972183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}