Paul Bretl | 7/30/2025
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Through six training camp practices, there’s been a fairly common occurrence within each of them: the Packers’ offense has put the ball on the ground too often.
Depending on what lens you’re looking through, this can either be a good thing from the defensive perspective or a not-so-good thing if you’re a member of the offense.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Matt LaFleur said of the fumbles. “It’s great for our defense, and I think our defense is attacking the ball unlike anytime I’ve seen it in my, going into Year Seven now.”
Hit like and subscribe to my YouTube Channel ‘The Paul Bretl Show’ for more Packers coverage.
Ultimately, it’s the offense’s job to not put the ball on the ground no matter what. As we know, the ball is life in the NFL. But, for the most part, these forced fumbles are more so a product of the defense’s aggressive and relentless pursuit of the football rather than sloppiness from the offense.
“You see guys come out in practice,” Evan Williams said at his locker, “anytime they’re close to the ball, anytime anyone’s close to the ball, punching at it violently. We’re talk about angry, violent intentions.”
Williams continued, “To go earn that forced fumble is definitely different. I like the way guys are approaching every day having the right mentality about coming to practice, always being ball aware.”
The Packers’ defense in Year 1 under Jeff Hafley was one of the best at forcing interceptions, generating the third-most in football with 17.
When it came to forcing fumbles, the Packers didn’t rank poorly by any means, generating 16 on the season, which was good for the eighth-most. But in evaluating the defensive performance during the offseason, Hafley believed that there was a lot more opportunity out there for his unit when it came to forced fumbles.
So going after the ball quickly became a priority for the Green Bay defense.
“We took the ball away last year,” Hafley said. “We didn’t force enough fumbles and that’s not good enough, so the emphasis coming in is one, our play style, how hard we’re gonna play, how physical we’re gonna play, how we run to the ball. That’s non-negotiable. The other is we’re gonna attack the football, so we need to emphasize it more. We need to coach it better and we need to put it out there on tape.”
Like Hafley has said, as a coach, you can talk about anything, you can prioritize whatever, but getting buy-in from the players so they take that messaging and then go and execute on the football field is entirely different and ultimately what is needed for anything to be successful.
Enter Packers’ defensive quality control coach Wendel Davis, or as he’s known around the building, “Ball King” or “BK,” for short.
Davis has been a defensive quality control coach with the Packers since the 2019 season. Prior to that, he spent three seasons at Georgia as a graduate assistant.
When it came to the messaging of this offseason priority, which again, is constantly attacking the football, Hafley had a vision for what he wanted that to look like, but it’s been the Ball King’s job to execute on it.
During every defensive unit meeting, Davis is the first to present because the ball is the most important thing. The players are divided into teams, and Davis charts and tallies different things that happen over the course of practice, handing out pluses to each player and team when things are done well and minuses when there’s room for improvement as a way to hold the players accountable but also to create some fun competition within the game that includes a weekly award winner.
“He gets up there and he’ll show the point system,” Hafley said of Davis’ presentation, “he’s got a unique siren now built into the ceiling that every time we get a turnover, he hits a button and the siren blares. So we want to sound the siren as much as we can.”
In part, the presentation, points system, weekly award, siren, and everything that goes into this is meant to break up the grind that is training camp and the hard coaching that the players are constantly receiving. But, as Hafley makes sure to note, this is very serious as well, and within Davis’ presentation are plenty of teaching moments.
“He’ll show some video clips,” Hafley continued, “some fun videos but it always come back to different ways to teach how to attack the football, how are we going to respond when we get an interception. The ball’s on the ground, how are we going to scoop it?
“He’ll call guys out who were in position to take a punch and they didn’t. He’ll call guys out who we don’t think took a real punch, took a not very aggressive punch, but it’s stuff the guys are having fun with but they’re starting to swing, and they’re starting to run out of the stacks and that’s what I’m most proud of right now is the effort that the guys have.”
If you want to know whether or not Hafley and Davis have the players’ buy-in, all you have to do is watch a few minutes of the team portion of practices and see the constant barrage of “haymakers,” as Hafley put it, that the Packers’ defenders are throwing at the football.
And with that emphasis, in the early going of training camp, the results have followed with a number of footballs being put on the ground by the offense. The foundation for this play-style and the aggressive pursuit of the ball has seemingly been established. Now it’s about carrying that attack mentality into games and maintaining that sense of urgency.
“It has to be from everybody,” Hafley said of the buy-in, “and I appreciate the buy-in of the players, but we want to lead the league in forced fumbles. We are going to have to work at it and that’s very important to us.”