Sam Siefkes Might Not Be Packers’ Linebackers Coach Without Decade-Old Fib

GREEN BAY – Sam Siefkes is a Wisconsin native and the Green Bay Packers’ new linebackers coach. That’s pretty cool, but not remotely as cool as the story that helped pave the way.

Siefkes was born in Oconomowoc and played football at Division III UW-La Crosse in 2011. He got his start in coaching as a student-assistant at La Crosse after injuries ended his playing career.

“I had just gotten done doing an internship at Florida International (in 2014), and then I went back to my school at UW-La Crosse to finish up what would have been my senior year,” Siefkes said at Lambeau Field on Tuesday. “I had student coached there for, that was my upcoming third year. So, I had already been coaching for three years by the time I was 21 years old.”

Siefkes enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 2015 with an eye toward a career as a physical-education teacher.

“Teaching is kind of my passion. That’s why I got into coaching,” he said. “And I was like, ‘You know what? I kind of want to try the college route and see if I can do it for the home state.’ So, I knocked on some doors and asked for a few favors.”

One of those favors was from Josh Whitman. Whitman, who’s been the athletic director at Illinois since 2016, previously had been the AD at UW-La Crosse. Critically, his four-year NFL career included time with the Chargers, when new Badgers head coach Paul Chryst was tight ends coach.

“I think he put a note in for me and I wrote some letters and, lo and behold, I ended up being able to volunteer for him for a year,” Siefkes said.

Siefkes left out a big part of the story. It’s a story told in 2018, when he got one of his first big breaks by being named defensive coordinator at Wofford.

“The only reason I got that job (at Wisconsin),” Siefkes told GoUpstate.com, “was because I sent handwritten letter after handwritten letter and knocked on as many doors as humanly possible. One day, I just showed up at the door and said I had a meeting.”

He did not have a meeting.

“Yeah, yeah, I did do that,” Siefkes said on Tuesday. “You know, Coach Rudy, Joe Rudolph, who’s now at Notre Dame, I think Paul eventually just said, ‘Yeah, Rudy, just meet with this guy, so I don’t have to,’ essentially. And Rudy met with me, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, if you want to volunteer, by all means.’ And so they kind of threw me in the room with all the graduate assistants, and I was kind of at home from there.”

Who knows how life would have worked out differently had he not fibbed.

“I don’t know,” Siefkes said. “I mean, I probably would have been a high-school teacher and a high-school coach, honestly. I knew I wanted to coach. I didn’t necessarily know the level at that time.

“I had done three years of student coaching at the Division III level and had volunteered at FIU, so I kind of knew some sides of the different levels that college presented. But I was like, ‘You know what? I’m taking courses here at Wisconsin. I might as well try and see if there’s somebody that will let me just, you know, pass water out to the players.’ So, that was my excuse to try to just give it one last go at that round.”

Siefkes was a graduate assistant under defensive coordinator Dave Aranda for the Badgers in 2015 and the defensive coordinator at UW-Platteville in 2016 and 2017. After three seasons as the coordinator at Wofford, he got his next big break when he spent the 2021 and 2022 seasons on Mike Zimmer’s staff with the Vikings.

Sam Siefkes (left) is shown alongside Jonathan Gannon with the Cardinals in 2023. They are together again with the Packers. | Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

When Jonathan Gannnon was hired as the Cardinals’ head coach in 2023, he hired Siefkes to be his linebackers coach. He spent two years in that role before spending last season as the defensive coordinator at Virginia Tech.

Now, Siefkes is back home in Wisconsin and back together with Gannon. Without talking his way into a job with the Badgers, he might be a teacher today.

Then again, he is a teacher today. Rather than a bunch of kids, he’s teaching the likes of Edgerrin Cooper, Zaire Franklin, Isaiah McDuffie and Ty’Ron Hopper.

“One of J.G.’s things is, it’s our job as coaches to make sure that we serve the players at all facets as we can,” Siefkes said. “My thing as a teacher is, I want to make sure that I’m hitting all the different learning styles that guys have. Not all guys learn the same. Coaches don’t learn the same, and players don’t learn the same. So, my job is to cater to all of the players.

“So, however Duff learns, or Coop learns, or Zaire or Hop or whoever it might be, I need to make sure that I cater to their learning style to give them the best possibility to play well, right? That’s important to me.”

Standing at the podium in the Lambeau Field media auditorium on Tuesday, Siefkes didn’t sound like a rough-and-tumble linebackers coach. That persona will come to the forefront when it’s time to step to practice and play.

“When I get on the field, I feel like my work is done from that aspect, from a teaching standpoint, and now it’s more into drilling into the technical aspect,” he said. “And we want to make sure that we execute at a high level schematically and technically as a position group. And so I think that’s when I turn the switch and you’ll hear my voice a little bit louder.”

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