GREEN BAY, Wis. — No, John Schneider didn’t actually babysit Eliot Wolf.
These two former Green Bay Packers scouts meeting in Super Bowl LX as opposing front office executives is a good enough story without that tall tale.
Two guys who grew up here, two guys who went to the same high school, two guys who worked for the Packers — and now two guys who built the rosters for the last two teams standing in the 2025 NFL season.
The story of Schneider, the 54-year-old Seattle Seahawks general manager, and Wolf, the 43-year-old executive vice president of player personnel for the New England Patriots, has a big-brother/little-brother dynamic to it, but Schneider might have embellished the origins when asked about Wolf a couple of years ago.
“I used to babysit him,” Schneider claimed with a chuckle at the 2024 NFL combine, shortly after Wolf was promoted to his current position. “He was always around us. He was always in the draft room with us, he was always sitting in our offices, always taking as much information as he possibly could, always had very, very strong opinions. If you ask him, I think he thought he was ‘all conference’ and I’m not sure he ever played a down for the high school.”
When asked if it’s true that Schneider babysat him, Wolf sent a text message that said “No” followed by a smiley face emoji.
But both can agree that their careers started because of the same person: Ron Wolf.
Eliot was 9 years old when his father was named the Packers’ general manager in 1991. It wasn’t long before Eliot showed an interest in his dad’s work. Every evening, Ron brought home the NFL waiver wire — back then it was sent out on paper — and Eliot perused it, asking questions about this player or that player.
It was around that time when Schneider, who was about to graduate from college at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, wrote Ron a letter asking for a chance to scout for the Packers, even if only as a volunteer. Schneider received a letter of rejection. Schneider wrote two more letters and got two more rejections. Finally, at the suggestion of a friend, Schneider cold-called Ron, and suddenly there was room for him as an intern in the Packers’ scouting department in summer 1992.
Schneider was hired full time in 1993 as a pro personnel assistant, a position he kept for three years before he had jobs with the Chiefs (1997-99), Seahawks (2000), Washington (2001) and eventually back to the Packers (2002-09) before he was hired as the Seahawks’ GM.
In Green Bay, Schneider was part of an all-star cast of scouts that included John Dorsey, Brian Gutekunst, Scot McCloughan, Reggie McKenzie, Jon-Eric Sullivan and Ted Thompson, among others — all of whom became NFL general managers.
And Eliot was around them all.
“Those guys, I’m sure they weren’t easy on Eliot when he was young, which was good,” Ron said this week.
It began with the younger Wolf hanging around the scouting offices at Lambeau Field. The scouts would give him tasks such as making tags with every draft-eligible player’s name on it and moving them on and off the board as the draft progressed.
But Eliot wanted to do more.
One day, Ron told McKenzie to see whether Eliot knew anything about the players.
“I remember Ron brought me into his office, and he said, ‘Reg, do me a favor, see if this kid can do it,'” McKenzie recalled. “So I gave him a few players to evaluate and see how he does.”
Eliot, still in high school at Green Bay Notre Dame (which had merged with Schneider’s old school, Abbot Pennings High), returned a few days later with his reports.
“I had my little red pen out,” McKenzie said. “I remember seeing him years later, and he said, ‘I still have those first reports when you had red ink all over them.’ He said, ‘Any time I thought I was feeling myself, I’d look at those and say OK, Reg knocked me back down to earth.’ He remembered that vividly and said, ‘I thought I was good, but I’ve got a long way to go.'”
The way Eliot recalled it, he wrote his first report on Chad Scott, a cornerback in the 1997 draft. He said he gave Scott a first-round grade. Lo and behold, Scott was picked 24th by the Steelers. Eliot was 15 years old at the time.
“At first, Eliot was cocky, he was confident and he was like, ‘I know it all,'” McCloughan said. “Shortly after the [AFC] championship game the other night, he texts me and he said, ‘The only reason I’m here is because guys like you helped me out.'”
Ron retired after the 2001 draft. By then, Eliot was a student at the University of Miami, where he worked in the football department, and had done an internship with the Atlanta Falcons. His first full-time job came with the Packers in 2004 as a pro personnel assistant. He was promoted five times and stayed with the Packers through the 2017 season, when he was the team’s director of football operations.
At age 36, he interviewed for the Packers’ general manager job, but he didn’t get it.
The Packers instead went with Gutekunst, and Eliot Wolf left the organization shortly thereafter. He was reunited with Dorsey, who was GM of the Browns at the time, before Wolf joined the Patriots in 2020. When the Bill Belichick era in New England ended, team owner Robert Kraft made Wolf the de facto GM, naming him executive vice president of player personnel in 2024. Wolf’s first draft pick was quarterback Drake Maye at No. 3 overall. When the Patriots hired Mike Vrabel as coach last year, some thought Wolf might lose power, but it does not appear that has happened.
“No one talks about Eliot,” McCloughan said. “They talk about the head coach, of course, but it was really cool the moves he had and how they panned out. I remember he called me, and he was like, ‘What do you think about Drake Maye?’ I said, ‘Listen partner, if you get a chance to take him, you take him because he’s Troy Aikman in the making.’ He was like, ‘Really?’ I was like, ‘100 percent.’ But I didn’t think he’d be the runner-up for MVP in his second season.”
Like Wolf, Schneider had some potential paths to running the Packers. Early in his tenure with the Seahawks, he had a clause in his contract that would let him out to become Green Bay’s general manager. But by the time the job opened in 2018, Schneider no longer had that clause. Then, before the Packers appointed Ed Policy to take over as team president last summer, Schneider went deep into the interview process for that job.
Now, Schneider is about to make his third Super Bowl appearance with the Seahawks and Wolf his first with the Patriots. Another former Packers scout, Alonzo Highsmith, works for Wolf as a senior personnel executive in New England.
“Just think about this: Two guys from the same high school up there in Green Bay are essentially the general managers of the two teams that are playing for the Super Bowl,” Wolf said. “Think about that now, from that little town of 100,000 people.”
Thrilled to share that 2 of our alumni from our predecessor, Abbot Pennings and Notre Dame Academy,will be competing as General Managers in the Super Bowl!
John Schneider, APHS 1989 @seahawksPR @Seahawks
Eliot Wolf, NDA 2000@PatriotsWe are a incredibly proud school community! pic.twitter.com/MI6KZ6iB7E
— Notre Dame Academy Athletics – Green Bay, WI (@NDATritonSports) January 26, 2026
While Ron Wolf called himself “a proud papa,” he’s also thankful for the wisdom guys such as Schneider imparted on his son.
“When I was younger, basically an extension of what I learned from my dad: Be honest, treat people right. As far as scouting: Trust what you see and believe it,” Eliot Wolf said of what he learned from Schneider. “A passion for the game, the players, the process and the people you meet. As I continued on and actually worked with him, he made me realize and learn the importance of relationships throughout the league, whether that’s colleagues on other teams, or agents, or media, etc. He has a remarkable ability to connect with people, to lead and command respect while not being a hard-ass, and his skill in working with different coaches’ personalities is well known.”
Just don’t call him Eliot’s babysitter.
“It was kind of babysitting,” Schneider said last week. “We were at the office. It was not just me. It was Reggie, Dorsey, but I was the youngest one of all those guys at the time.”
ESPN’s Brady Henderson and Mike Reiss contributed to this report.
