The first time Jeff Hafley went out on a limb and took a leap of faith, he was only 26.

The now Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator had a $40,000 job as the defensive backs coach at Albany, and his goal in the spring of 2006 was to learn as much about coaching as possible. Every weekend, he’d find a coaching clinic, jump in his Subaru Outback and drive there, soaking in as much football Xs and Os as he could.

Hafley met Pitt defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads and learned that then-head coach Dave Wannstedt had an open-door policy – where young coaches were welcome to watch spring ball and sit in on meetings. He attended a practice, then the spring game, kept coming back, even working summer camps there.

“I grabbed my defensive coordinator and said, ‘Every time I turn around, this Hafley guy is here,'” Wannstedt told me. “This guy’s a grinder, man. He can’t get enough.”

Wannstedt had an opening on his staff for 2006 and a chance to work with an exceptional player in cornerback Darrelle Revis, but it was only a graduate assistant (GA) job, paying maybe $7,000.

Hafley took the job. He bought an air mattress, and for two years, he slept in his office at Pitt’s football facility. He’d go to dinner with his parents after a home game, and they’d drop him off at the office, joking he had the nicest house in all of Pittsburgh.

“For me, it was like ‘Look, I want to coach.’ I kind of gave up everything, like most coaches do,” Hafley told me. “You don’t really get to see family. You don’t see friends. You lose touch with people. I said I’m going to try to do this until I’m 30 years old, as far as I can. If it works out, I’m going to keep going with it, and if not, then I’ll reassess. I just kept going and never looked back.”

Hafley didn’t even have an apartment, but he was making an impression on everyone around him.

“If we would have a 7:30 staff meeting, I’m in the office around 6, and I’d hear voices,” Wannstedt says. “He’s got our freshmen and all the young defensive backs in a meeting at 6:30 in the morning. There’s nobody in the building, coaches are just coming in and Jeff’s in there having a player meeting. I said to myself, ‘This guy gets it.’”

The humble roots had started earlier, as an oft-injured receiver from Montvale, New Jersey, playing at Division I-AA Siena, which would discontinue its football program three years after he left.

“This was Siena College. You had to really love football to play there,” Jay Bateman, Hafley’s head coach in 2000 and now the defensive coordinator at Texas A&M, told me. “He was such a good teammate, a tremendous worker, loved football. That was a very driven group of kids, and Jeff was one of the leaders of that team. 

“As far as being a good receiver? That was questionable, and he’d say the same thing. He’s the typical eye-black, wristbands, go in there to block people and run the right routes every time. But like he wasn’t getting open a whole lot. Just a leader of men, and he’s always been that way.”

When Hafley was pondering leaving Albany for the uncertainty of a GA job and the certainty of sleeping in his office, he called Bateman, asking what he should do.

“Bet on yourself,” Bateman told him. “You have the talent to coach at that level and above. He’s a tremendous football coach. He believes what he believes. I talk to him all the time, and we talk about scheme, but honestly, it’s more about how he’s messaging things to his players. He’ll be a head coach in the NFL soon.”

When Wannstedt resigned after the 2010 season, one of his former assistants, Greg Schiano, called him to ask who his best young coaches were. Schiano hired Hafley to his staff at Rutgers, and a year later, brought him along when he became the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ head coach.

“I learned so much from Coach Wannstedt, at a young age, on how to be a coach, how to treat people, how to treat a staff, how to communicate with players,” Hafley says. “He probably influenced me more than anyone else on all that stuff. That really helped shape me. [Schiano] is the most detailed, demanding coach I’ve ever been around. He helped me be detailed in my X’s and O’s, to dot all my I’s and cross all my T’s. I think it’s a cool combination to have those two, because they’re pretty different guys. I take something from everybody.”

Hafley went from the Bucs to the Browns for two years, then the 49ers for three. He went through a 2-14 season, a 3-13 year, two 4-12s, never a winning record in his first seven years as an NFL assistant.

But Hafley had the good fortune to be surrounded by future NFL head coaches. In Cleveland, he worked with Kyle Shanahan, Mike McDaniel, Aaron Glenn and Kevin O’Connell. With the 49ers, he worked under Shanahan and with Robert Saleh and DeMeco Ryans, along with future Ohio State coach Ryan Day.

“It’s all these young guys, and we’re picking each other’s brains,” Hafley says. “We’re talking football. It’s like heaven, right? All these good people who are good coaches. I’ve been around some great, great staffs. … I learned a lot of football just being around Kyle Shanahan. You want to talk about having to know what you’re doing and having an answer for what you’re doing, being able to be confident in what you’re teaching scheme-wise and being challenged and being on it, if you don’t know what you’re doing around Kyle, it’s not going to be very good.”

Day hired Halfey to be Ohio State’s defensive coordinator in 2019, starting a second stint in college football. After a year with the Buckeyes, he was the head coach at Boston College, still only 41 years old. He pushed through the COVID-19 pandemic, through the start of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL) era, going 22-26 in four seasons, but making a bowl and winning in his fourth year.

But Hafley wasn’t really coaching, and he wasn’t really happy.

“I’m a guy that loves football and loves to coach, and my last two years, I wasn’t coaching football anymore,” he told me. “I felt like I was doing some other job. It was hard for me to leave the team, so hard for me to leave the team, but I just wasn’t myself anymore, because I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do.”

The emergence of NIL and the threat of player transfers grew with each year at Boston College. Wannstedt talked regularly with Hafley, and recognized how much of an uphill battle recruiting became when other schools in the ACC had larger financial commitments.

“Boston College, they don’t have the resources that Clemson has, some of those,” Wannstedt says. “You’re busting your tail recruiting these guys, you train them for a year, you coach them for a year, and then they start having success and you can’t afford to keep them. The NIL was just starting to gear up then, and some of these teams couldn’t compete.”

Hafley remembers sitting down with receiver Zay Flowers, a future first-round draft pick, and Flowers was upfront with him, telling him other schools were calling with offers, tempting him to take more money elsewhere. He convinced Flowers to stay, but it was a sign of everything to come.

“It’s devastating,” Hafley says. “When that keeps happening, over and over again, you pour everything you have into these guys and you’re teaching them and coaching them and you were maybe their only offer, and now they potentially might be leaving for money. They’re not thinking about their degree. They’re not thinking about their education. So instead of coaching, I’m on the phone trying to raise money.”

“I got to the point where I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,'” he adds. “I had stopped coaching. I was doing a job that wasn’t what I’d always dreamt to do.”

Hafley had two years left on a Boston College contract reportedly paying him $4 million a year, but top NFL coordinators can make close to that much, and Packers coach Matt LaFleur called him. Hafley had worked with LaFleur’s younger brother, Mike, with the 49ers, so there already was a connection. A return to the NFL was exactly what he needed.

“I didn’t know what my expectation was, other than I couldn’t wait to get back to coaching football and immersing myself in football again,” Hafley says. “So far, it’s been a lot of fun. You ask if this is what I expected? Yeah. I love what I’m doing. I love going to work. I love the guys I coach. I love being around the staff. I look forward to it every day.”

Talk to the best players Hafley has coached, and they’ll tell you one of his strengths is that he’ll listen to his players, asking them what works and doesn’t work as he develops a weekly game plan.

“His preparation was incredible. His attention to detail was incredible,” cornerback Richard Sherman, who played for Hafley with the 49ers, told me. “The biggest thing was his ability to relate to players and have an open ear. Coverage and defense on paper seems simple, but there’s a lot more nuance to it, and that leads to discussions in the DB room. […] He was always a guy who was open to alternative ways of getting the job done and being flexible, open to suggestions. That’s helped him understand the strengths of his players.”

In 2012, Ronde Barber was 37 and playing safety for the first time, and Hafley was 33 and his position coach. The Hall of Fame defensive back remembers him always being “curious,” not because he didn’t know what to do but because he wanted to know what everyone in the room thought. It made him likable, the kind of coach players don’t want to disappoint in games.

“He has these quiet leadership qualities that people gravitate toward,” Barber told me. “He’s successful because he communicates, and the guys know exactly what they’re supposed to do and when they’re supposed to do it.”

Barber continues.

“I’ve watched a lot of Green Bay tape, and they don’t make mistakes. They don’t beat themselves. It shows up on tape, over and over. He doesn’t have to motivate players because they’re already motivated themselves because they understand what their jobs are.”

The idea of listening to players and valuing their input started out of necessity for Hafley. His first coaching job was at Division III Worcester Polytechnic Institute, coaching running backs, close to his comfort zone, but when he got hired at Albany, it was to coach the defensive tackles.

“I had a defensive tackle, a fifth-year guy, I think he was older than me at the time,” Hafley says. “I remember I called him in, met with him. I was like ‘Look, I don’t even know how to get into stance.’ I played wideout.  Let’s sit down, I’m going to pick your brain. I coached the d-tackles for a year, then I coached the outside backers for two years, then I became a DB coach, so I got to learn it from the front to the back, and I knew I wanted to be a defensive guy. It started with just what job I could get, and I ran with it.”

Hafley said he learns from his players every week and will continue to rely on their input as he makes decisions not only about scheme, but individual game plans from week to week.

“I want to know, if these are the three blitzes, which do you like?” he told me. “If that’s your favorite one, then guess what? He’s probably going to run that blitz really well, and probably going to take more ownership with it. ‘Hey, Xavier McKinney, what do you think of this disguise and how it looks?’ It’s, ‘Coach, I love it,’ or maybe let’s have a conversation. Awesome. Give the players ownership, and if a certain guy wants to play press technique a little different, let me find out how I can make it better for him, rather than change the whole thing for him.”

Hafley’s weaving path between the college game and the NFL has exposed him to more ideas and challenges. Sherman said the NFL has different looks from week to week, but nothing like the diversity of thought and schemes in college football.

“You may get one team totally spread out, a guy throwing it 56 times in a game,” Sherman says, “and then you may get old-school Stanford running goal line in the middle of the field, power football. You may get Oregon hurry-up. You have to adjust to every style of play you get, and that’s definitely helped him.”

Coaching in college meant working with younger players that need more coaching, and he said shifting back to the NFL hasn’t changed his recognition that success and development must begin at a very basic level with players.

“It’s to develop players and teach these young guys the fundamentals and technique. I think that’s still the most important thing that people forget about sometimes,” Hafley said. “I think in the NFL, people get caught up in scheme, scheme, scheme. Ultimately, I believe in all my heart that it’s about fundamentals and technique. It’s about your eyes and your feet. It’s about getting off blocks. It’s about tackling. It’s about leverage. At BC, we didn’t always have the highest-rated recruits, you had to develop guys.”

Says Barber: “He’s seen everything. He’s been the assistant, had his own room, has been a head coach, now he gets to coordinate. The accumulation of all those experiences make him what he is now.”

Hafley’s first year as an NFL coordinator last year was a huge success. The Packers went 11-6, made the playoffs with the youngest team in the league, and Hafley’s defense ranked sixth in points allowed, fifth in yards allowed and fourth in takeaways.

Then, in August, he got a surprise boost with news. The Packers had traded for All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons, a move that elevated Green Bay to be seen as one of the top challengers to the Eagles in the NFC. It’s the kind of move that makes you a better coach immediately, but also raises the expectations for success even higher.

“I texted him that day: ‘I don’t know who your D-ends coach is, but I’d like to apply for the job,” Bateman told me.

Hafley already had confidence in his defense and the Packers as a whole, and adding Parsons only added to that.

“I loved our group — last year, by the end of the year, we were a top, whatever, five, six defense,” Hafley says. “You build the confidence in training camp, and you’re getting ready for a season and all the sudden, in comes one of the elite players in our league at a premium position. He’s been unbelievable with his energy and being a teammate and being coachable. It raises the level of who we have and what we can do, and he’s brought some extra energy to this group.”

The Packers play at the Steelers next week, so Hafley will go back to Pittsburgh, coaching in the same stadium he did at Pitt. There is no air mattress now, and he can go home to his wife Gina, whom he met at Pitt, and their daughters, Hope and Leah.

Hafley is coaching at the highest level of football, but he also remembers when he was driving to coaching clinics and sleeping in his office. He’ll get a text now from an unknown number, a high school coach with a question about a coverage he wants to run.

“If I’m at Texas A&M High School and I text and say, ‘Hey, do you have five minutes?’ he’ll call me,” Bateman says. “That’s who he is.”

Hafley’s always listening and always learning. Even coaches love to be coached.  

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is I don’t have all the answers,” Hafley says, “and if I keep listening and I keep learning and evolving, things are going to be pretty good.”

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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