Green Bay gave its defensive coordinator a chance to take a deep look at the candidates.Three days after former Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Joe Barry was fired, the Packers interviewed four candidates to fill the vacancy: former Chargers head coach Brandon Staley, Bills linebackers coach Bobby Babich , Cowboys defensive backs coach Aden Durde and the Broncos. Coach Christian Parker.
According to a report from Andrew Mertig of the Pack-A-Day podcast, two sources said Parker is not only currently in Green Bay, but has been offered the role of the team’s next defensive coordinator. Packers writers have not confirmed or denied that report at this time, and Mertig has not disclosed whether Parker has accepted the offer. There hasn’t been any interest in Parker in recent hours, so while we wait for more details on the Packers’ defensive coordinator search, let’s take a closer look at Parker’s coaching history.
Parker is a native of Northern Virginia and attended the University of Richmond as a student athlete. As a Spider, he played both wide receiver and cornerback on the football team. Shortly after his playing career, he joined Virginia State, a Division II program, as a graduate assistant and then was promoted to defensive backs coach. After two years at Virginia State, he left one HBCU for another, joining Norfolk State of the FCS as the defensive backs coach.
He also spent two years there before joining Mike Elko’s staff at Notre Dame as a defensive analyst in 2017.
Elko, now the head coach at Texas A&M after a successful career at Duke, will leave Notre Dame for A&M in 2018 and Parker will follow him in an analyst role.In 2019, Parker was hired by the Green Bay Packers in his first NFL role as defensive quality control coach under then-defensive coordinator Mike Pettine. He was the defensive backs coach for the Denver Broncos, a position he held for two years before being given a full-time on-field coaching position. In his three years in Denver, Parker was held back despite being coached by three different coaches and three different defensive coordinators.
Most notably, he coached with current Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, current Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero and current Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph. Defensive coach of the Denver BroncosSo what kind of coach is Parker and what will he do in Green Bay if he is named the team’s defensive coordinator? Not much is known about the 32-year-old, who has yet to play at any level, but multiple reports indicate how highly regarded he is in Denver.
One comes from Patriots reporter Taylor Kyles, who spoke with Robbie Davis, who covers the Broncos. Davis said Parker was key to transitioning the defense from a Fangio-style defense to the scheme Joseph wanted to implement in Denver. The Packers showed midseason improvement over the Broncos, scoring just 17 points in four games after Denver dropped 70 points to the Miami Dolphins in Week 1
It’s worth noting that Parker interviewed for the Patriots’ defensive coordinator job. The position appears to have gone to in-house candidate DeMarcus Covington. Currently, the only teams that have interviewed Parker are the Packers and Patriots.Another report highlighting how important Parker is to the Broncos’ coaching staff came from Broncos Wire, which included Joseph’s thoughts on the assistant coach. “He’s sharp,” current defensive coordinator Vance Joseph said of Parker on June 14.
– It’s sharp. He is a star. He is a great partner to work with. As an experienced trainer, I have been involved in coordination for about 7 years. I have tape and I’m looking for other ways to do things with it. “[I] talk to Christian every day and get a sense of what he was doing with Vic [Fangio] and those guys before.
[We’re] making changes and building on what we did last year. He is smart, hardworking and his players love playing for him. He is a star.If you want to get into the Parker “vibe,” the Broncos YouTube page has two Parker videos. The first is a Mic’d Up segment that follows him through his workouts. The second is Parker’s media availability during the summer. Both videos can be found below.
