The Packers’ offensive line got some additional help from a long-time college and pro offensive line coach.
According to reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Silverstein, Harry Hiestand spent training camp with the Packers in what appeared to be a consultant-style role.
Hiestand is about as decorated as an offensive line coach can be, boasting success and connections to significant players at just about every stop in his multi-decade career. Dating back to the 1980s, Hiestand coached
with eight different college programs and one NFL team, the Chicago Bears, in two different stints. From 2005 through 2009, Hiestand worked with the Bears under head coach Lovie Smith, then returned to Chicago under Matt Nagy in 2018, staying through the 2019 season.
In between those two tours with the Bears, Hiestand had stops at Tennessee and Notre Dame, and the latter appointment probably explains how he ended up in Green Bay. His time with the Fighting Irish overlapped with Matt LaFleur’s one-year stint there, so Hiestand’s role with the Packers turns out to be not that much of a surprise. In football, even more so than other businesses, it’s about who you know as much as what you know.
So what’s Hiestand up to in Green Bay? That’s not exactly clear, as Silverstein laid out. He characterizes Hiestand as a “consultant,” but it might be more complicated than that:
The well-respected Hiestand coached on the field during training camp, taking over some of the duties Butkus, Gordon or a quality control coach would normally handle. It meant, instead of having one offensive line coach in charge, under the supervision of the offensive coordinator and head coach, the Packers had three line coaches, plus an offensive coordinator who used to be a line coach, in the linemen’s ears.
Hiestand isn’t listed in any official capacity on the Packers’ website, and Silverstein reports that he may still be offering some kind of insight to the team during the season, but his exact role, if any, is a mystery.
Still, with as many questions as the Packers are facing on the offensive line, having another voice in the room hardly seems like a bad thing. Whatever pointers Hiestand can offer are probably worth whatever trade offs arise when you shake things up a bit.
