Green Bay Packers: Joe Barry Reportedly Emerges as Favorite for DC Job

Alright, let’s start from the beginning with this one. As we all know, Mike Pettine is no longer the defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers. Then sometime between last Saturday and I’m guessing mid-week, Matt LaFleur conducted nine interviews — that we know of — with Chris Harris, Bob Sutton, Jerry Gray, Jim Leonhard, Ryan Nielson, Ejiro Evero, Matt Burke, Joe Barry, and Chris Kiffin.

Then Friday morning — yesterday — we learned from Tom Silverstein that through his sources, he had heard that Barry, Leonhard, and Evero were the favorites for the defensive coordinator position. By Friday evening, we had learned that second interviews had taken place, and it was down to Leonhard and Evero for the job, with Leonhard being considered the favorite and was potentially even offered the position already.

Now here we are on Saturday, and Leonhard reportedly turned down the role with the Green Bay Packers to remain at Wisconsin. So once this news broke, the logical conclusion was that Evero would be the next defensive coordinator in Titletown–after all, he was in the reported final two.

But to quote Lee Corso for a moment, not so fast!

Per Tom Silverstein, it is now Joe Barry who is the apparent front-runner for the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator opening.

Did you follow all of that?

While Evero is a young up and coming coach like many of the LaFleur’s staff already, with his highest position coming as the Los Angeles Rams’ safety coach where he’s been the last four seasons, Barry is far more experienced and has two previous stints as a defensive coordinator. The first was with Detroit from 2007 to  2008 and the other with Washington from 2015 to 2016–neither went particularly well.

By Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric, which brings a more comprehensive approach to calculating defensive success, Barry’s Detroit teams ranked 30th and 31st while he was the defensive coordinator and Washington’s ranked 21st and 25th, respectively.

Again, these numbers aren’t everything by any means, and in Green Bay, Barry would certainly have a lot more talent to work with, but it’s worth mentioning.

More recently, Barry was the assistant head coach/linebackers coach with the Rams the last four seasons, which includes working with LaFleur while he was the offensive coordinator there in 2017. Under then defensive coordinator Brandon Staley in 2020, the Rams defense ranked first in points per game allowed and fourth by DVOA.

Barry has since left the Rams to follow Staley across town to the Los Angeles Chargers to be the defense’s passing game coordinator.

At this point, I’m not sure what to believe. It’s odd that Barry wasn’t in the conversation yesterday evening, but now he has apparently leaped frogged Evero, who many assumed — myself included — was the front-runner for the opening with Leonhard no longer in the mix.

For the time being, and I’m guessing it won’t be much longer, we will wait to see who LaFleur selects as the next defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers. It appears that it is between Barry and Evero, with Barry having the edge, according to Silverstein. But as we’ve seen, that could all change.

Update: Per Rob Demovsky of ESPN, the Green Bay Packers will hire Joe Barry as the next defensive coordinator.