Packers Discussion: Did Rich Bisaccia step away on his own volition?

GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - JANUARY 07: Assistant head coach and special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia of the Green Bay Packers looks on before the game between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field on January 07, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

(Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images) | Getty Images This has been floating around the Green Bay Packers-sphere since the announcement that Rich Bisaccia stepped down from his gig as the Packers’ special teams coordinator . There’s one camp that believes that Bisaccia actually left his post voluntarily, and there’s another that thinks he was forced out by head coach Matt LaFleur.

Personally, I think Bisaccia really did leave on hisown. There are a couple of factors why: It was February 17th when the job became available, after all 11 other special teams coordinator positions league-wide had already been filled.

Those hires include coaches who previously worked with either LaFleur or new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon: Craig Aukerman (hired by Falcons, was in Tennessee with LaFleur), Danny Smith (hired by Buccaneers, was in Washington with LaFleur) and Jeff Rodgers (hired by Bills, was Gannon’s coordinator in Arizona).

Some people have made comments like “Well, the Packers can take their time since they’re not doing anything right now,” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. The combine, a league-wide tampering event heading into free agency that doubles as the premier scouting event of the calendar, is in less than a week.

The meetings leading up to the combine sort of set the tone for the team’s strategy going into the upcoming year. Not only does the team not have a special teams coordinator, but LaFleur’s time will be taken away from this offseason prep to run this search (it will be interesting to see if LaFleur even makes the trip to Indianapolis this year).

The real vacation time in the NFL is from mid-June, after minicamp, to mid-July, when training camp starts. Every club in the league is working full-time at this point in the calendar. This timing sucks, and there’s no way around it.

It’s a hard sell for me to believe that LaFleur was too antsy about the defensive coordinator market to wait for the conference round games to play out so that he could interview Jim Leonhard for the gig, but that he’d wait for another month before putting the pressure on Rich to leave, only after 11 other special teams coordinators were hired elsewhere.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this decision was made suddenly, considering that Bisaccia’s number two, Byron Storer, took the Cleveland Browns’ job just a week before Bisaccia’s announcement.

LaFleur seems to still be interested in the Bisaccia tree, as it has been reported by Sports Illustrated ’s Bill Huber that Green Bay will interview Kyle Wilber , a former special teams quality control coach for the Packers under Bisaccia, for their vacancy.