Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley is a popular name in this year’s head coaching cycle and he finished an interview with a team on Thursday.
The Falcons announced the completion of an interview with Hafley. Hafley has already interviewed with the Dolphins and Titans and the Raiders, Cardinals and Steelers have also expressed interest in him.
Hafley has spent the last two years with the Packers and the team finished sixth and 11th in points allowed during his time on the staff. He was the head coach at Boston College before going to Green Bay and Falcons president of football Matt Ryan is an alum of the school.
The Falcons have also interviewed former Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, former Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, Seahawks defensive coordinator Aden Durde, Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, and Dolphins defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver.
Packers Clips
There’s another known candidate for the Steelers’ head coaching vacancy.
Via Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, Pittsburgh has put in a request to interview Green Bay defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley for the job.
Hafley, 46, has been a popular candidate in the 2026 coaching cycle, with several teams requesting him for an interview. He’s been with the Packers as defensive coordinator since 2024. Green Bay ranked No. 11 in points allowed and No. 12 in yards allowed in 2025.
Fitting with the profile of their last three head coaches, the Steelers have put in requests to interview several defensive assistants in their 30s and 40s — including Hafley.
But Hafley also has previous head coaching experience, as he led Boston College’s football program from 2020-2023, going 22-26 in his four seasons.
Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley completed an interview with the Dolphins for their head coaching vacancy yesterday, and today he’s the betting favorite to land the job.
The betting odds have Hafley as a +175 favorite to be the Dolphins’ next head coach.
New Dolphins General Manager Jon-Eric Sullivan was the Packers’ vice president of player personnel before the Dolphins hired him last week, and Sullivan and Hafley were in Green Bay together for two years. That could give Hafley a leg up on the competition.
The 46-year-old Hafley was the head coach at Boston College from 2020 to 2023 before resigning to become the Packers’ defensive coordinator. He went 22-26 at Boston College.
Hafley can’t be hired until the Dolphins have complied with the Rooney Rule by interviewing at least two minority candidates. So far, they are known to have interviewed only two candidates, former Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski and Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, both of whom are white.
The next-best odds for the Dolphins job go to Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula at +400. Stefanski is at +800 and Kubiak is at +1000.
The NFL previously applied the term “super” to the wild-card round of the playoffs. This year, the ratings were.
Via Sports Business Journal, the six games televised by Fox (which had two), CBS, Prime Video, NBC and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 attracted an average of 31.9 million viewers.
That’s a 13-percent increase from last year, and the best since the NFL expanded the playoffs from six teams to seven in 2020, which grew the wild-card round from four games to six.
The total average is the best since the four-game format attracted an average of 32.6 million in 2016 for these games: Raiders-Texans, Lions-Seahawks, Dolphins-Steelers, and Packers-Giants. The smallest victory margin that year was 13 points, with an average score of 30-11.
This year, four of the games went down to the wire. Two of the games were lopsided.
The Cowboys have requested an interview with Packers defensive line coach/run game coordinator DeMarcus Covington for their defensive coordinator position, Josina Anderson reports.
Covington, 36, joined the Packers before the 2025 season, coaching a unit that includes former Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons. Covington was the Patriots’ defensive coordinator in 2024.
He spent eight seasons in New England, serving as a coaching assistant (2017-18), outside linebackers coach (2019) and defensive line coach (2020-23) before his promotion under Jerod Mayo. The Patriots fired Mayo after one season.
Covington won a Super Bowl ring with the Patriots.
The Cowboys also have requested or have interviewed Eagles pass game coordinator Christian Parker, Giants interim defensive coordinator Charlie Bullen, former Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon, Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr, Browns safeties coach Ephraim Banda, Vikings defensive pass game coordinator Daronte Jones, Broncos defensive pass game coordinator Jim Leonhard and their own defensive line coach, Aaron Whitecotton.
Packers cornerback Trevon Diggs said before playing the Bears that he was ready to contribute despite being a new arrival in Green Bay. He didn’t contribute much in the Packers’ playoff loss.
Diggs only played one snap in the game against the Bears, on the first possession of the game. On that one snap, a third-and-8, the Bears completed a short pass to Luther Burden, who picked up a first down while running behind a block from D.J. Moore, who knocked Diggs onto his back.
It was not an impressive play from Diggs, and the fact that the Packers never put him on the field again the rest of the game — even though there was no indication he was injured, and even as Caleb Williams was completing passes all over the field during a fourth-quarter comeback — suggests that the Packers didn’t have much confidence in Diggs’ ability to contribute.
Diggs is under contract to the Packers for 2026, but his salary cap hit is $15 million and none of his pay is guaranteed, so it’s safe to say he’ll be released. Diggs is only 27 years old and once looked like he was becoming an elite cornerback, but he tore his ACL early in the 2023 season and hasn’t been the same player since. He’ll likely be competing just to make a roster somewhere this summer.
Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley has completed an interview with the Dolphins for their head coaching vacancy.
The Dolphins announced the interview wrapped up on Wednesday afternoon. It is the third interview that the Dolphins have announced since firing Mike McDaniel last week.
Hafley has spent the last two seasons running the defense for Green Bay. New Dolphins General Manager Jon-Eric Sullivan was the Packers’ vice president of player personnel before being hired in Miami last week.
Hafley’s name has come up in a number of head coaching searches around the league and he has interviewed with the Titans. Former Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski and Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak have also interviewed with the Dolphins.
Until the Packers announce that coach Matt LaFleur definitely will be back in 2026, there’s a chance he won’t be.
While most teams have no reason after the end of a given season to state the obvious, there’s currently nothing obvious about LaFleur’s future in Green Bay.
On Wednesday’s PFT Live, we pointed out the possibility that the Packers want to see whether someone will contact them with interest in making a deal for LaFleur. And while LaFleur would have to be willing to participate in the two-step process (new team makes a deal with the Packers, new team makes a deal with LaFleur), it may be his only alternative to accepting an extension he doesn’t like or coaching the final year of his current deal.
Appearing on ESPN Milwaukee earlier today, ESPN’s Adam Schefter characterized LaFleur’s status as “up in the air.” (Aaron Rodgers is gonna be upset.) Schefter explained that, if an extension isn’t finalized, it’s possible that some other team will call the Packers about possibly hiring LaFleur.
Regardless of the procedure that applies in situations like this, the reality is that there will be plenty of back-channel communications regarding, for example, whether LaFleur would be interested in one or more of the various vacancies and what it would take to hire him.
Again, all of this ends the moment the Packers declare LaFleur will be the coach in 2026. Until that occurs, anything can happen.
In picking Packers-Bears for Prime Video, the NFL knew exactly what it was doing.
The best matchup of the wild-card round became the most exciting of the six games, too. That propelled the contest to an all-time streaming record, with 31.61 million viewers.
The number represents a 43-percent bump over last year’s Prime Video playoff game between the Steelers and the Ravens, which averaged 22.07 million viewers. It also broke the streaming record set by the Netflix Lions-Vikings game on Christmas Day, with 27.52 million.
The streaming high-water mark comes at a perfect time for the NFL. Amazon, as we understand it, will have to re-bid on the game next year. And the massive number for the latest game makes the property even more valuable going forward.
Which would explain the NFL’s decision to handpick the best game of the wild-card slate for a streaming-only broadcast.
And, yes, people still huff and puff about streaming only games. As long as the numbers blow the house down, the pivot to streaming will become more and more permanent.
During a post-game press conference following Monday night’s playoff loss to the Texans, Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers delivered a rant regarding the perceived presence of now-former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and current Packers head coach Matt LaFleur on the hot seat.
Rodgers’s hot-seat remarks may have shattered some of the lingering ice between Rodgers and LaFleur.
“I’m speechless,” LaFleur told Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com via text message. “He didn’t have to do that, but he did. [It’s] one of the nicest compliments [of] my life. I’m so appreciative of him for that.”
LaFleur coaches Rodgers for four seasons in Green Bay, guiding him to a pair of league MVP awards. By the time Rodgers was traded to the Jets in 2023, the relationship between LaFleur and Rodgers was strained, at best.
“I mean, this league has changed a lot in my 21 years,” Rodgers told reporters on Monday night. “You know, when you hear a conversation about the Mike Tomlins of the world, Matt LaFleurs of the world, those are just two that I played for, and when I first got in the league, there wouldn’t be conversation about whether those guys were on the ‘hot seat,’ you know, but the way that the league is covered now and the way that there’s snap decisions and the validity given to the, you know, the Twitter experts and all the, you know, experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they’re talking about, to me that’s an absolute joke.
“And for either of those two guys to be on the hot seat is really apropos of where we’re at as a society and a league, because obviously Matt’s done a lot of great things in Green Bay, and we had a lot of success. Mike T, he’s had more success than damn near anybody in the league, you know, for the last 19, 20 years. And more than that, though, when you have the right guy and the culture’s right, you don’t think about making a change. But there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the outside, and obviously that sways decisions from time to time, but it’s not how I would do things and not how the league used to be.”
The reality is simple. The beast that has helped Rodgers make nearly $400 million during his career has created an appetite for non-stop coverage, reporting, and analysis. And fans of the bad teams expect them to try to change. If owners feel compelled to make changes in order to keep making the kind of money needed to pay the salaries of players like Rodgers, that’s their decision.
Folks in the media are merely trying to figure out not where the pink slips are but where the pink slips are going. Owners who think it’s ridiculous for their coaches to be regarded as being in jeopardy by those paid to cover the league can issue a statement to the contrary, if they want.
In Green Bay, June comments from new Packers CEO Ed Policy created the impression that 2025 would be an up-or-out year for LaFleur. Even now, three days after a postseason collapse against the Bears, the Packers have not said that LaFleur definitely will be back for 2026.
As to Tomlin, the prevailing view by the time the playoffs rolled around was that Tomlin wouldn’t be fired, and that he’d be gone only if he chose to be. (Which is exactly what happened.)
Rodgers’s take was, frankly, erroneous. It’s not the media’s fault that coaches are viewed to be on the hot seat. It’s our job to try to figure out where the inevitable openings (so far this year, nine of 32) will be. And if the NFL’s owners are sufficiently wishy-washy to make firing decisions based on comments from “Twitter experts and all the experts on TV now who make it seem like they know what the hell they’re talking about,” that’s the thing Rodgers should be whining about.
