The Green Bay Packers have long carried a reputation they hate — being cheap when it comes to assistant coaches — and in this hour of Jen, Gabe & Chewy, the crew digs into whether that label is still fair, outdated, or finally being corrected.

012326 JGC Hour 1

With new reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and fresh details about coordinator salaries, the conversation turns into a forensic breakdown of how the Packers got here — and why the Joe Barry era may have forced a philosophical reset inside the organization.

🏈 The “cheap Packers” narrative

The hour opens by reacting to a detailed piece from Pete Doherty that reveals concrete numbers behind Packers coaching salaries — numbers that are rarely public in the NFL. The biggest revelation:

Jeff Hafley was making roughly $4 million per year as defensive coordinator

The Packers also paid a $2 million buyout to pry him away from Boston College

Rich Bisaccia remains one of the highest-paid special teams coordinators in the league

Those facts seem to contradict the long-held belief that Green Bay pinches pennies everywhere except the head coach spot.

🔄 Did Joe Barry expose the problem?

The crew connects the dots back to the winter of 2021, when the Packers’ defensive coordinator search ended with Joe Barry — a hire that, in hindsight, felt desperate.

The theory debated throughout the hour:

The Packers may have low-balled candidates in 2021

More qualified options passed

Joe Barry accepted because he had few alternatives

The defense suffered as a result

From there, the argument follows that Matt LaFleur and team leadership may have gone to the front office and said, “We can’t keep doing this.”

What followed:

A major spend on Rich Bisaccia

A major spend (and buyout) on Jeff Hafley

A noticeable shift toward paying market rates for coordinators

💰 There’s no reason to be cheap

One of the most pointed parts of the hour centers on money — or rather, the lack of a real excuse.

The Packers reportedly have nearly $580 million in reserve, a number that keeps growing annually. While they don’t have a billionaire owner or private equity cash infusion like other teams, they also don’t need one.

The hosts ask the obvious question:

If you have the money, why risk losing quality coaches over a few million dollars?

🧠 Reputation matters in hiring

The discussion shifts to reputation — how organizations are viewed inside coaching circles.

If Green Bay had developed a reputation for low-balling assistants:

Top candidates would hesitate

Agents would steer clients elsewhere

The team would end up choosing from the bottom of the pool

The crew argues that the Packers now appear motivated to correct the record, making it clear they will pay “Green Bay Packers money” for the right coordinator — especially in a year where the defensive coordinator market is crowded and competitive.

🎙️ Jason Wilde joins

Later in the hour, Jason Wilde joins to add context from his reporting and experience around the league. He confirms that both things can be true at once:

The Packers were cheap in certain eras

They appear to have materially changed in recent years

Wilde also notes how secretive coaching salaries are in the NFL, suggesting that when exact numbers leak, they almost always come from teams trying to shape a narrative.

That raises another key question:

Are the Packers intentionally letting it be known now that they pay — because they don’t want past mistakes repeated?

⚖️ What matters now

The hour closes by bringing the conversation back to the present:

The Packers are in a hyper-competitive DC market

Multiple teams are hunting for top coordinators

Reputations, money, and timing all matter

The Joe Barry era may be over, but the lesson remains clear:

If you don’t pay for quality, you pay for mistakes.

🎧 A detailed, insider-level discussion on reputation, money, and why the Packers’ coaching philosophy appears to be evolving — only on Jen, Gabe & Chewy.

...