On Wednesday, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Silverstein broke the news that the Green Bay Packers have moved on from strength and conditioning coordinator Chris Gizzi. This is the second piece of major news the Packers have made today, with the first being the firing (or at least demotion) of former defensive coordinator Joe Barry.
Gizzi, a former Packers player, suited up for the team from 2000 to 2001. Starting in 2014, after a stint with the North Carolina Tarheels, he returned to the squad as a strength and conditioning assistant. In 2019, Matt LaFleur’s first year as a head coach, he was promoted to the head strength and conditioning coordinator.
There’s no doubt that the Packers were banged up this season, despite having one of the younger rosters in the league. Star players like David Bakhtiari, Aaron Jones, Christian Watson, De’Vondre Campbell, Jaire Alexander and Eric Stokes were simply not available on the field consistently.
Watson even stated, during his end-of-the-year media availability in the locker room, that he is going to travel to get hamstring scans with Packers head trainer Bryan “Flea” Engel this offseason. Based on what we’ve been told over the last week, we can go ahead and guess that the franchise believes that their strength training department, rather than their rehab unit, was where the team could see the most improvement moving forward.
At the moment, there have been no indications on who is going to replace Gizzi and whether or not the team will promote from within to fill the role.
