This will surely excite many of you. Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy will consider internal candidates to fill the now-vacant defensive coordinator opening.
The overwhelming feeling appears to be that the Packers should get a fresh start and hire someone from outside the organization. And they may still do that — they will look both inward and outward. However, it appears there will be one or two people currently on staff who get a look.
Demovsky says those guys will be cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt and safeties coach Darren Perry.
The first reaction is and should be, don’t those guys coach two positions that have been bad the past couple years? And of course the answer to that is, yes.
That said, it isn’t as if they haven’t turned out solid positional groups as well.
Whitt has been the Packers’ cornerbacks coach since 2009. So he’s overseen players like Tramon Williams, Charles Woodson, Sam Shields and, briefly, Al Harris.
Perry has also been in his current position with the Packers since 2009. His hits would include Nick Collins and Morgan Burnett. It should also be pointed out that he made guys like Charlie Peprah and Atari Bigby look like serviceable starters.
Obviously, the argument against hiring one of these guys is it’s more of the same. However, neither guy has been a coordinator before, so no one knows what they’d bring to the table. Most likely, their defenses would be different than Dom Capers’.
Personally, I am still in favor of some new blood. There is a downside to that, of course. The current players — those that are on the roster next year — will be dealing with a new scheme and new staff. There’s bound to be a learning curve that will have to be dealt with.