Green Bay Packers Move On from Special Teams Coach Shawn Mennenga

Today Green Bay Packers Head Coach Matt LaFleur was holding exit interviews with his three coordinators, Nathaniel Hackett, Mike Pettine, and Shawn Mennenga–a routine practice among NFL teams at the end of the season. However, in what is not much of a surprise, Tom Pelissero just reported that Mennenga has been fired.

This was Mennenga’s second year with the Green Bay Packers and neither was particularly good. In fact, this year was quite bad.

Rick Gosselin of Sports Illustrated comes out with his yearly special teams rankings and he had Green Bay ranked 26th in 2019. If you recall, their punt return unit was on a historically bad pace prior to the Tyler Ervin signing over halfway through the season.

This year, Gosselin ranked the Packers’ special teams unit 29th as it seemed like each week they couldn’t avoid the big mistake.

There were not one but two punt return touchdowns allowed. A blocked punt in Houston, a fumbled kick off in Indianapolis, missed extra points, and a kick return unit that could barely get the ball to the 25 yard line.

On top of that, there were penalties, a bad snap, and JK Scott just really struggled. Not to mention the overall lack of development.

Whew. I’m sure I missed something, there was a lot after all, but you get the point. Week after week, the mistakes piled up.

Firing a coordinator is an unfortunate part of the business that happens around the NFL but it’s a move that simply needed to be made by LaFleur. With all of the weekly blunders that occurred, the Packers are lucky it didn’t cost them more in the win-loss column.

Now Matt LaFleur will begin his search for Mennenga’s replacement. As Zach Kruse of Packers Wire pointed out, Brayden Coombs is a name to keep your eyes on moving forward. He was fired by the Lions last month, despite Detroit’s special teams unit ranking third in Gosselin’s rankings, and Green Bay was interested in him prior to hiring Mennenga in 2019.

We are still awaiting word on whether or not Mike Pettine will be back.

Update: ESPN’s Rob Demovsky reports that there is a “strong chance” that Matt LaFleur promotes from within. Maurice Drayton “is expected to get the first shot at it.”