GREEN BAY, Wis. -- John Mannion remembers the little notepad, a yellow one that his son, Sean, brought with him. Young Sean, 7 years old at the time, wanted to tag along while his dad went to scout a rival high school in Northern California.
As the game went on, John noticed Sean writing things down. By the time it was over, Sean had filled the pages -- but not with the doodles and scribbles of a second grader.
"My coaching buddy and I went to scout a team on a Saturday, and we brought him along," recalled John, then the coach at Foothill High School in Pleasanton, California. "Sean had a little yellow pad, and he was writing all this stuff down about the other team."
John had no idea at the time that Sean would go on to become a star quarterback for Foothill High and at Oregon State and then go on to a nine-year career as an NFL backup.
But if you would've told John back then that Sean would get into coaching, he would have believed that.
"It was something that interested him from a young age," John said. "It didn't surprise me, as he was coming down the stretch of his playing days, that he reached out to people in coaching. He was very inquisitive about it and very much wanted to learn all he could to be prepared when the time came."
That time came last year. Within a matter of weeks, Sean went from being a backup quarterback with the Seahawks, his last stop as a player, to a job as an offensive assistant with the Packers, where he reunited with Packers coach Matt LaFleur. This offseason, Sean was promoted to quarterbacks coach, replacing the legendary Tom Clements, who retired as the only person to coach the trio of Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love.
In a way, the Packers stole Sean from a division rival. He was set to interview with the Bears early in 2024. Before the interview, Sean and LaFleur talked on a Zoom call, and they discussed the presentation Sean planned to make during his interview in Chicago.
At first, the call was a welcome distraction for LaFleur. It pulled him away from the NFC Championship Game between the 49ers and the Lions, which, LaFleur said, he "really didn't care to watch," after the Packers had lost to San Francisco a week earlier.
"I jumped on a Zoom call with him in the second half and he showed me what he was going to present, and I told him, 'Wow, that's pretty good. I think you should come up to Green Bay right when you're done with that interview,'" LaFleur recalled shortly after he hired Mannion as an offensive assistant in 2024. "And I'm surprised that they let him out of the building. They tried to get him, but I guess we had more to offer. But we're lucky to have him. I really do think this guy's going to have a bright future for us and certainly in the coaching profession."
Sean and LaFleur go back to their days with the Rams, where Mannion spent his first four NFL seasons (2015-18). LaFleur served as Mannion's offensive coordinator in Los Angeles during the 2017 season.
"For me, as a player, I always knew that this would be the next step, so I really attacked my playing career with this kind of in the back of my mind, soaking up as much knowledge as I could to weaponize it for this new role I'm in here now," Sean said last week when he spoke with reporters for the first time since his promotion this offseason. "Really starting with that, and all those coaches in L.A. that I got to work with. Between playing experience and all the things I was able to learn from the coaches I worked with throughout my playing career, I think that's kind of my biggest asset in terms of bringing that to the QB room."
While Clements was widely respected for his teachings, few in his quarterback room looked at him as anything other than a coach. His playing days at Notre Dame and in the CFL were decades in the rearview mirror.
In Mannion, the Packers quarterbacks -- Love, Malik Willis, Sean Clifford and the recently signed Taylor Elgersma -- have one of their own.
"I think you can speak to what these guys are going through," Sean said.
"So I think just having been handed a playbook and be [told], 'Learn this,' you kind of have a plan of attack in mind because you've been in that position."
Sean's first order of business has been to get Love back to the way he played late in his first season as a starter in 2023 before a knee injury early last season compromised some of his fundamentals and his ability to practice on a regular basis.
"He's a great talent, he's a great person," Mannion said. "He's a great person to work with every day and he has great habits, so I think really when you combine those three things, really the sky is the limit. For him, what we're really trying to focus on, I think, is the fundamentals and the footwork. I think that'll help you be your most consistent accuracy-wise, decision-making-wise and timing-wise, so that's really our main area of focus with him."
While Mannion spent nine seasons with three different teams -- the Rams, Vikings and Seahawks -- he appeared in only 14 games and started three. Yet he relished the role of helping starting quarterbacks like Jared Goff and Kirk Cousins prepare.
"In some ways, you're a little bit of a player-coach in that role in terms of being there for the starter," John Mannion said. "It's an interesting role, one that can lead you in that direction."
For years, John kept the yellow notepad Sean used for that scouting report. He had it by his side throughout his high school coaching career. When Sean took the coaching assistant job with the Packers last year, John gave it to him.
"It's kind of funny to look at now," John said. "But it shows he always kind of had it, that interest [in coaching]."