The rising defensive coordinator is also a candidate for a pair of other jobs.
The Atlanta Falcons are casting a predictably wide net with their head coaching interviews, and the latest sign that this part of the search may take a bit is that they’re requesting interviews with coaches they can’t actually interview just yet.
Jeff Hafley is one such candidate. A longtime college coach who broke into the NFL in 2012 with the Buccaneers, Hafley has been a defensive backs coach in the pros, a defensive coordinator in college, a head coach at Boston College, and has spent the past two years as the defensive coordinator with the Green Bay Packers. He’s a candidate now because the Packers defense has been excellent the past two years after many seasons of defensive coordinator carousel time, and because Hafley does have head coaching experience, albeit a so-so run with Boston College. It’s worth noting that Boston College hasn’t been good since Jeff Jagodzinski was coaching Matt Ryan and a post-Matt Ryan team in 2007-2008, though.
I would consider Hafley a long shot for this job, both because he’s not as experienced as some of the other candidates and Atlanta’s likely looking for an offensive-minded head coach, but the interest reflects the caliber of the job he’s done with Green Bay. It’s clearly important to the Falcons that their gains on that side of the ball don’t go away, even if they’d rather have a coach who can lift the offense and would consider keeping Jeff Ulbrich as defensive coordinator, and so we can’t entirely rule his candidacy out. These coaches do have to interview, after all, and what Hafley lacks in connections to this franchise, he could make up for with impressing Arthur Blank and company.
Stay tuned for more interview requests, because we all know they’re coming.
Category: General Sports
