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The Green Bay Packers underwent some big changes to their coaching staff this offseason, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. They’ve brought in former offensive coordinator Joe Philbin to reprise that role and also added Jim Hostler to be the passing game coordinator for head coach Mike McCarthy.
But despite McCarthy’s previous comments about the offense adopting a new playbook this season, Philbin says the team has merely been “refining” and “enhancing” what has been a consistently strong offense as opposed to starting completely from scratch.
Article Continues Below“As I said to them in the first meeting we had on April 16, ‘If you look at historically what this offense has done in the 12 years that Mike’s been here, I think it’s third in the NFL. So that’s like in the top 10 percent of your business over a long period of time.’ So they’ve done a lot of great things here,” Philbin said, via Jason Wilde of the Wisconsin State Journal. “It’s been a process of refining, enhancing, tweaking, as opposed to, ‘Yeah we scrubbed it down.’ Yes, we went page by page. [But] we’re not starting from scratch here.”
There will obviously be some changes to the playbook brought about by the subtraction of longtime receiver Jordy Nelson and the addition of talented tight end Jimmy Graham. But the most important piece of that offense－Aaron Rodgers－will still be there and should be ready to go after missing most of last season due to a broken collarbone.
It’s imperative for the Packers to put their star quarterback in a position to succeed as often as possible. But while Rodgers is certainly capable of succeeding on his own as it is, perhaps a few more tweaks can help make the offense as a whole running that little bit better this season.
