Son of Super Bowl RB Emerges as Packers Special Teams Coordinator Candidate

GREEN BAY, Wis. – For seven seasons, Steve Sewell was one of the premier third-down backs in the NFL. He was a key member of Denver Broncos teams that reached three Super Bowls.

His son, Sam Sewell, didn’t make it to the NFL as a player. But he has as a coach, and he is on coach Matt LaFleur’s interview list to become the Green Bay Packers’ new special teams coordinator, a source told Packers On SI.

Sewell was the assistant special teams coordinator the past three seasons for the Arizona Cardinals, who were coached by the Packers’ new defensive coordinator, Jonathan Gannon. New Cardinals coach Mike LaFleur, the brother of Matt LaFleur, hired a new special teams coordinator, Michael Ghobrial, but retained Sewell.

Sewell played collegiately at Northern Colorado and started at tight end during his final two seasons in 2009 and 2010.

He immediately jumped into coaching, serving as tight ends coach and special teams assistant in 2011 and 2012 at Colorado State-Pueblo, where his father was the running backs coach. In 2013 and 2014, he was McKendree University’s running backs coach and special teams coordinator.

Sewell returned to CSU-Pueblo in 2015, replacing his father, who retired after helping Pueblo win the national championship in 2014. In 2015 and 2016, Sewell helped brothers Cameron and Bernard McDondle set an NCAA record for most rushing yards by brothers on the same team.

Denver Broncos running back Steve Sewell (30) carries the ball against Washington during Super Bowl XXII. | Peter Brouillet-Imagn Images

Next, he spent the 2017 and 2018 seasons as running backs coach at Indiana State, helping a team that was predicted to finish last in the conference instead place third. From 2019 through 2022, Sewell was the running backs coach at Eastern Michigan. During his final season, he added the title special teams coordinator. While at EMU, he worked with kicker Chad Ryland, who wound up transferring to Maryland for his final season and was a fourth-round pick by the Patriots in 2023.

“When it comes to the hiring process, people forget stats and numbers very, very fast,” Sewell said on the Coach and Coordinator Podcast. “They have no bandwidth to keep that in there. But what they remember are stories and they want to hear if you can talk about how you’ve developed players, how you’ve helped them grow, how you’ve gotten more out of them than they thought was even in there.

“And when it comes to just that overall development aspect. We’re all given some type of a basket of oranges, if I can consistently squeeze more juice than other guys can, I think that every coach that’s hiring is, that’s what they’re looking for, plain and simple.”

For Sewell, coaching is about helping his players and not necessarily helping himself land the next job.

“I think there’s a strong emphasis on career advancement,” he said on the podcast. “It’s always what’s next? How can I advance? And I think, in my opinion, more should be put into career equity. And what career equity is to me, it’s how much you’re pouring into your players.

“In every job I’ve ever had, the first thing that’s been asked of me is some version of can you take players where they can’t take themselves? Can you make these guys the best versions of themselves? Can you take a room and leave it better than you found it? And so when it comes to just being able to show and to have examples of and to talk about how much you can cause your players to grow, that’s what your resume is.”

The Cardinals’ special teams finished 30th in the Packers On SI NFL Special Teams Rankings in 2025 and were 30th in DVOA, as well. They were better in 2024, finishing 15th in our rankings and 18th in DVOA.

“They’re detailed out and they coach them hard,” Gannon said of the work of Rodgers and Sewell last year. “We put a lot of emphasis into it and our guys take to it. They know the impact that they can have on teams to generate explosives, to score points, to field-position battle and to not foul. All those things go into playing really good clean football in that phase and that’s a huge piece of why we win games.”

Coaches on Matt LaFleur’s list of candidates include:

Tom McMahon (interview)

Cameron Achord (interview)

Kyle Wilber (interview)

Matthew Smiley (took job at South Carolina)

Devin Fitzsimmons (unsure about interview)

His pool of candidates almost certainly runs deeper than that list.

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