The Green Bay Packers will need a new special teams coordinator for the 2026 season. After four years with the team, assistant head coach and special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia is stepping away, the team announced on Tuesday.
Rich Bisaccia steps down as assistant head coach/special teams coordinator
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) February 18, 2026
“After taking some time to reflect over the last few weeks, I have made the decision to step down as the assistant head coach and special teams coordinator of the Green Bay Packers,” Bisaccia said.
“Coaching for the Green Bay Packers was truly an honor, and I will always be grateful for my time here. I look forward to whatever is next for me and my family, and I wish nothing but the best for everyone in the organization.”
People across the league have widely praised the venerable coordinator. He joined the Packers after serving as the interim head coach for the Las Vegas Raiders. Bisaccia brought over 40 years of experience to Green Bay.
“While we are disappointed to lose a person and coach as valuable as Rich, we respect his decision to step down from the Packers,” head coach Matt LaFleur said.
“Rich was a tremendous resource to me and our entire coaching staff who had a profound impact on our players and our culture throughout the building. We can’t thank him enough for his contributions to our team over the last four years. We wish Rich, his wife, Jeanne, and the rest of their family all the best moving forward.”
Bisaccia is revered across the league and championed by players, including many of his former charges from Las Vegas who came to Green Bay to play under him again. Unfortunately, he couldn’t solve Green Bay’s deeply rooted special teams issues.
That troublesome third phase of the game improved under Bisaccia, which admittedly wasn’t difficult, given the unit ranked 32nd in 2021. Still, the group never even reached league average.
In Rick Gosselin’s annual special teams rankings, Bisaccia’s group finished 22nd in 2022 and 29th in 2023. Sports Illustrated‘s Bill Huber chronicled his own grades following Gosselin’s retirement, with the Packers ranking 22nd in 2024 and 20th in 2025. An improvement from previous regimes, but fans expected more from a decorated coach.
Many fans wanted the Packers to move on from Bisaccia following Green Bay’s latest playoff exit, in which missed kicks played a paramount role. Yet it’s unexpected all the same at this point in the coaching carousel.
Brian Gutekunst spoke as if he was expecting Bisaccia to return for the 2026 season at his end-of-season press conference, praising Bisaccia’s leadership and influence.
“I have a lot of faith in Rich and what we’re doing there,” Gutekunst said.
There was plenty to dislike about Bisaccia’s tenure as special teams coordinator, but his influence brought some positive results.
More than ever before, the Packers kept players on the roster for their special teams ability. Players like Nick Niemann and Kristian Welch made the roster for teams abilities, providing some veteran and dedicated play for a unit that is predominantly made up of fringe roster players. There was more willingness to play starters on pivotal team plays, despite Matt LaFleur’s preference not to, especially after early blunders in kick protection in 2025.
Bisaccia also turned Keisean Nixon into a back-to-back All-Pro kick returner and helped develop Daniel Whelan into one of the league’s best punters.
Green Bay’s inability to excel on special teams goes beyond the coordinator. The team’s draft-and-develop philosophy and greater focus on other areas mean it will struggle to produce until priorities shift. It should be noted that the areas Green Bay actually cares about — kick-and-punt coverage — consistently performed well.
While we don’t know if stepping down means a full retirement or simply stepping away for now, the Packers have an important hiring ahead of them, and the timing isn’t great. At this point in the offseason, most of the largest positions are filled. That means many of the top special teams coordinators the Packers could have hired if Bisaccia had been fired or had chosen to step away sooner are already employed elsewhere.
The top internal replacement, special teams assistant coach Byron Storer, took the Cleveland Browns coordinator job under new head coach Todd Monken.
Bisaccia’s legacy may not be remembered fondly by the fanbase thanks to misses in the biggest moments, but he was a step in the right direction for the franchise. Bisaccia was the highest-paid special teams coordinator in the league, experienced, well-regarded, and always had his players sing his praises, even when he was a bit of a hardass. It was a jump from the internal promotions with little experience. The team still hasn’t fixed its longest-standing foundational issues with special teams, but Bisaccia at least shifted some of the mindset, and that matters.
His interviews were always entertaining, bringing his “angry, short Italian” demeanor and both educating and riffing with reporters. Bisaccia was consistently my favorite coordinator to cover and to learn from, even if it was because of his “we-fence” teaching the wrong lessons.
Whoever the Packers hire next will have a target on them immediately, with expectations sky-high after constant errors and playoff letdowns. A new coordinator won’t magically fix the consistently woeful special teams play Green Bay serves year after year. The best legacy to Bisaccia would be for the higher-ups to reevaluate their approach to the phase and to put Bisaccia’s replacement in a position for tangible success.