Packers Will Have at Least One Coaching Change


With Tom Clements retiring, there are a couple of in-house candidates to take over as quarterbacks coach.

Green Bay Packers quarterbacks coach Tom Clements at training camp in 2023.
Green Bay Packers quarterbacks coach Tom Clements at training camp in 2023. / USA TODAY NETWORK
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – In 2022, Tom Clements returned to the Green Bay Packers for a chance to reunite with Aaron Rodgers. In 2023, he stayed for a chance to coach Year 1 starter Jordan Love.

After one more season with Love in 2024, the 71-year-old Clements has told coach Matt LaFleur that he is going to retire.

“Man, it’s been a cool ride with him for the last three years,” LaFleur said during his season-ending news conference at Lambeau Field on Tuesday. “He’s incredibly consistent. What a great man, a great mind. Obviously, he’s had the opportunity to coach some of the best – talk about (Brett) Favre, Rodgers and then the development of Jordan Love. I mean, that’s pretty cool.

“I know he’s meant a lot to this organization (with) his contributions and he will definitely be missed. I can’t say enough great things about him. I really appreciate him. But he did tell me you guys have got to leave him alone. He don’t want to talk to nobody (smiling).”

Clements has had quite a career.

He was an All-American and national championship-winning quarterback at Notre Dame and a Hall of Fame quarterback in the Canadian Football League.

After four seasons as quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame, Clements embarked on two decades in the NFL, which included serving as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator for the Packers from 2006 through 2016 under former coach Mike McCarthy.

After a two-year hiatus, he spent two seasons as quarterbacks coach and passing-game coordinator for the Arizona Cardinals. He retired after the 2020 season but returned a year later to rejoin Rodgers and the Packers in 2022.

There will be big shoes to fill.

The in-house options are Connor Lewis, who just completed his third season as assistant quarterbacks coach and is a trusted lieutenant of LaFleur, and Sean Mannion, a former NFL quarterback who joined the staff this year.

“Potentially. We’ll see what happens,” LaFleur said when asked if he’d hire one of them, though the exaggerated raising of his eyebrows perhaps indicated he’s made the decision.

LaFleur credited all three coaches for helping Malik Willis win a pair of starts after being with the team for just a few weeks.

“What he’s been able to do, I’ve never seen something like this,” LaFleur said at the time. “Hats off to him, hats off to everybody around him, guys rallying, having his back.

“I think Tom Clements does a great job. And I’d be remiss to say Connor Lewis and Sean Mannion, just the help they’ve given him, the support, Jordan Love has been instrumental as well, giving him the tips and hanging right by his side and helping him out all along the way.” 

Clements was a stickler on fundamentals, in general, and footwork, in particular.

“That’s really a big aspect of playing quarterback,” Clements said in May 2023. “If you can try to watch a quarterback’s feet and not watch anything else, you might have a good idea if it’s going to be a good throw. If you can have your feet in position to make a throw – assuming everyone in the NFL has a certain degree of talent – you’re going to have a chance to have a successful play. …

“He bought into it because he saw the drills we did with Aaron, saw the success Aaron had, so he worked hard at it and had some improvement.”

The opportunity to work with Love convinced Clements to coach another two seasons.

“That was the initial reason I came back, a chance to win another Super Bowl, coach Aaron,” Clements said in 2023. “But I came back and enjoyed it, enjoyed working with Jordan and the other quarterbacks.

“And any time you can coach a guy and you think you can help him and it looks like you’ve helped him a little bit, that’s gratifying. So, it was a good room last year and decided to stay.”

For now, that’s the only staff change that LaFleur mentioned, though he said he has not talked to his staff. However, offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich is a candidate to become head coach of the Bears. If Stenavich were to get that job, it’d be natural for him to try to poach a couple of his colleagues, which would create more openings for LaFleur to fill.

“Yeah, it’ll be interesting over the course of the next couple of days,” LaFleur said.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.