The Green Bay Packers made a positive start toward improving their team in 2024 by firing defensive coordinator Joe Barry after three long, frustrating years. Despite having eight first-round picks on defense, Barry’s tenure saw no improvement in that area. In fact, one could argue that things grew worse. While they performed admirably in the last two weeks of the regular season, no defense allowed as many 200-yard running games as the Packers. Furthermore, they let New York Giants quarterback Tommy DeVito have the game of his life in a stunning and humiliating defeat.
The fact of the matter is that Barry’s defense was wildly inconsistent. There were other games where the defense performed exceptionally well, such as when they defeated Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs this season. However, they frequently made ordinary quarterbacks look like superstars. A week after being humbled by the Giants, the defense let Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield become the first visiting quarterback to have a perfect passing rating at Lambeau Field.
Unsurprisingly, Packers supporters reacted positively to Barry’s firing. Unfortunately, Barry has always faced an uphill struggle with supporters. Being the guy who was offered the job that former Wisconsin Badgers coach Jim Leonhard turned down couldn’t have been easy. However, his body of work did not serve him well.
Now that Barry is gone, Packers fans are hoping that the 2024 defense will be significantly better than it was in the previous three years. They’ve also expressed their discontent with another key member of the team’s coaching staff.
Green Bay Packers fans want Rich Bisaccia gone.
The Packers’ special teams has really not been that good since, well, 1996. Despite having Keisean Nixon as their kick returner over the last two seasons (seasons in which Nixon has been named First Team All-Pro), the overall performance of the unit has been disappointing.
This season, their struggles were highlighted by rookie kicker Anders Carlson’s inconsistencies, especially on extra point attempts. The 2023 sixth round draft pick was Rich Bisaccia’s handpicked successor to long-time Packers kicker Mason Crosby.
When the Packers hired Bisaccia, who had just been passed over for the head coaching job with the Las Vegas Raiders, he was supposed to help everything improve. But it has not, at least not to the extent that many fans would have liked.
For this reason, Bisaccia is now drawing the ire of fans
people who are dissatisfied with Bisaccia are the same people who, for the most part, praised the Packers for employing him in the first place. In any case, Bisaccia is also the assistant head coach, and Green Bay’s coach-firing deadline for the season has passed.
Hopefully, he can strengthen his unit by 2024, or fans may have even more reason to grumble.
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