• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Perry hired to handle safety issues: New Packers assistant gets plaudits for his intelligence

TAMPA, Fla. — Darren Perry, the Green Bay Packers’ new safeties coach, got the seal of approval from his former teacher and boss Tuesday at the Super Bowl.

“You’ve got the best defensive back coach in the league,” said Dick LeBeau, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive coordinator. “They’ve really got themselves a great defensive staff.”

Perry becomes the third former Steelers coach among the seven men appointed on defense by Mike McCarthy. He joins coordinator Dom Capers and outside linebackers coach Kevin Greene.

Joe Whitt Jr. was promoted from defensive quality control and will handle the cornerbacks, the post that was held by Lionel Washington for the last 10 years. Whitt was a candidate for the defensive coordinator’s job at his alma mater, Auburn, before being secured by McCarthy.

Washington landed in Oakland as the replacement for Perry, whose contract wasn’t renewed. Perry was caught in an unworkable situation in Oakland, where he was the No. 1 secondary coach but had to put up with help from assistant Randy Hanson and legendary Raider Willie Brown.

Capers went to the Steelers as coordinator in 1992, the same year the Steelers drafted Perry in the eighth round from Penn State. His position coach in Pittsburgh for the first three years was LeBeau.

Perry, 40, started all but two games at free safety from 1992-’98, sat out ’99 with a neck injury and ended his career as a starter in 2000 for New Orleans, where McCarthy and inside linebackers coach Winston Moss were on Jim Haslett’s staff.

In all, he intercepted 35 passes.

LeBeau gave Perry his start in coaching in 2002, hiring him to coach safeties in Cincinnati. Perry joined Bill Cowher’s staff in Pittsburgh in 2003 as assistant secondary coach, then moved up to run the secondary from 2004-’06. He wasn’t rehired by new coach Mike Tomlin in 2007.

“You’d have to ask Mike about that,” LeBeau said. “But I was sure sorry to lose Darren. Darren is smart, intuitive. The players will interact with him.”

Steelers cornerback Deshea Townsend, who played with Perry as a rookie in 1998 and then under him for four seasons, said players would love playing for him.

“Even when he was that free safety he lined everybody in one of the most complicated defenses there is,” Townsend said. “I think that’s carried over to him being a good coach. He’s going to be hands-on. If he says something, he means it.”

Perry replaces Kurt Schottenheimer, who is 21 years his senior and never played at the professional level.

“He’s going to confront them,” said cornerback Ike Taylor, a Steeler since 2003. “But they’re going to respect him because he played the game.”

Ray Horton, who was Perry’s assistant for three years before getting the top job under Tomlin, also said his playing experience would benefit at the position.

“Because he’s played he understands what’s going on,” Horton said. “Darren’s walking into a good situation with a veteran group that you don’t have to teach how to play.

”Very smart. Player-friendly. He’s driven. He’ll be a fundamentalist. He will be authoritarian when need be.“

John Mitchell, the Steelers’ assistant head coach who has coached the defensive line since 1994, said Capers would benefit because Pittsburgh has expanded its coverages in recent years and Perry will bring first-hand knowledge of them to Green Bay.

”Darren is a smart guy,“ Mitchell said. ”He will be a coordinator and eventually will have a chance to be a head coach in this league. He will get that back end playing really well.“

The Steelers play mostly Cover 2 and Cover 3 zones, and when they blitz it’s almost always with zone coverage. However, Taylor pointed out that in zone blitzes the two outside cover men actually are locked in man-to-man coverage.

Excluding third-and-long plays, Taylor also said he had the freedom to play bump-and-run within the scheme, and often did. That, said Taylor, should play to the strengths of Al Harris.