It began when the executive vice president of player personnel for the New England Patriots was in fourth grade. On days off from school, he tagged along with his father to his office.
But it wasn’t just any office.
It was at Lambeau Field.
And his father wasn’t just any father. Ron Wolf, the general manager of the Green Bay Packers, was the driving force behind his NFL teams’ acquisitions of Marcus Allen, Tim Brown, Ray Guy, Howie Long, Ken Stabler, Lee Roy Selmon, Brett Favre and Reggie White.
Ron’s son Eliot Wolf sat in a corner of the draft room as Ron led meetings. He also watched his dad study game tape.
When he was old enough to drive, Eliot came after school and sat with a pro scout, watching, asking questions and offering an occasional opinion. The pro scout, now the general manager of the Seattle Seahawks, jokes that he was babysitting Eliot, but what John Schneider really was doing was educating him. It was the same education that Eliot’s father gave Schneider.
On Sunday in Santa Clara, Calif., everything Ron taught Schneider and all Schneider taught Eliot will be on display as the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots decide the champion of the 2025 NFL season in the Super Bowl.
And an 87-year-old who was a guiding force in three Super Bowl victories will be prouder than ever.
Then-Packers general manager Ron Wolf, left, with his son Eliot in his Lambeau Field office. (Courtesy of the Wolf family)
The son of an orthopedic surgeon, Schneider lived six miles from Lambeau Field in De Pere, Wis., during his childhood. He was obsessed with football and cherished his card collection, but those were lean years for the Packers, so he became a Walter Payton fan. And he was a heck of a high school running back.
During his junior year at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, Schneider read a story about Ron Wolf. It said he had been a writer for Pro Football Illustrated and was hired by the Oakland Raiders in 1963 after writing Al Davis a letter.
So Schneider wrote Ron a letter asking for an internship. Then came a rejection letter, time on his knees in the St. Thomas chapel, three more notes to Ron, more chapel time and three more rejection letters.
The story Schneider read also said that Ron answered his own office phone, so he cold-called him on his private line on the day before Memorial Day in 1992. “To this day, I don’t know how he got that number,” Ron says. “Or how he knew I was there.”
Schneider talked Ron into bringing him in for an interview. Ron asked how long it would take him to get there. Schneider told NFL.com it was a five-hour drive, but he could be there in three. Once Schneider arrived, Ron assigned pro personnel assistant Reggie McKenzie to evaluate if Schneider could evaluate by having him write reports on six players. Schneider passed the test and was offered a temporary position, which eventually became a full-time job.
One day early in his career, Schneider watched tape of free agents with Ron and other Packers evaluators. One of the players, who wore No. 42 for the Rams, kept making plays.
“Who’s that wearing Dave Elmendorf’s number?” Ron asked, referencing a Rams safety from the 1970s.
No response.
No. 42 made another play.
“Who is wearing Elmendorf’s number?” Ron said again.
Finally, Schneider said, “Who’s Dave Elmendorf?”
Ron chuckled but admired Schneider’s courage. “He never disappointed,” he said. “John always spoke up. You could see early on he wasn’t afraid.”
Before Keenan McCardell established himself, the wide receiver bounced around on a few teams. Schneider saw something in him. When McCardell was let go, Schneider told Ron he should sign him. Regretfully, Ron didn’t listen, and before long, McCardell was in the Pro Bowl.
“Once he had a guy he liked, he was very adamant about his ability to play,” Ron says.
Schneider left the Packers in 1997 for a promotion with the Kansas City Chiefs, then worked for the Seahawks and Washington Redskins before returning to the Packers in 2002 after Wolf had retired. In 2010, he became general manager of the Seahawks.
He is one of six men who became general managers after having worked for Ron during Ron’s nine-year tenure in Green Bay.
In their second season together, general manager John Schneider, right, and coach Mike Macdonald have led the Seahawks to the Super Bowl. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
The high school Schneider attended merged with two others to become Notre Dame Academy. Eliot went to Notre Dame Academy.
When Eliot was a high school freshman, he was hired as a summer intern by Atlanta Falcons personnel director Ken Herock, who had worked with Ron for the Raiders.
That season after returning to Green Bay, Eliot spent a lot of time in the Packers’ training room with some of the league’s best players. Eliot was soaking his feet because of ingrown toenails — and soaking in a championship mentality. The Packers won the Super Bowl that year.
“Seeing the way the players carried themselves and the way they genuinely cared about each other was revealing,” he says. “And they were all kind of locked in to be Super Bowl champions, which everyone expected them to be.”
After that season, the Falcons let Herock go but brought back Eliot. Even then, it was evident that young Eliot had something his father and Schneider had that not many others did.
During training camp in 1997, the Falcons cut a wide receiver. Eliot told his father about him and suggested he take a look. Ron followed Eliot’s advice and signed Roell Preston, whom Eliot thought could be a returner. Packers coach Mike Holmgren gave him an opportunity to bring back kicks and punts, and Preston scored three return touchdowns and was voted to the Pro Bowl and the All-Pro team the following season.
In 2001, Eliot was a student at the University of Miami and worked as a volunteer in the football recruiting department, which gave him a rare view of another special team as 17 future first-round draft picks led the Hurricanes to a national championship.
When Eliot graduated from Miami in late 2003, his father was retired. But his last name was a door opener. He was offered scouting-assistant jobs by the Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles. Then, Packers head coach Mike Sherman offered him a job as a pro scout. At 21, Eliot was back in the offices he started hanging out in when he was 9.
Eliot was a natural at player evaluation, and Schneider and McKenzie helped refine his abilities. He learned from his father, too, but Eliot says Ron taught him less about player evaluation than self-evaluation — a critical, underestimated skill for a manager.
“He taught me how to treat people the right way and be honest,” Eliot says. “I learned from him how to have self-awareness and understand the areas of your personality that you need to supplement with help from others.”
It seemed as if Eliot was destined to become general manager of his father’s team in 2016, when the Packers blocked him from interviewing for the Detroit Lions’ general manager position. Eliot reportedly was their top choice. Two years later, the Packers promoted personnel director Brian Gutekunst to general manager over Eliot, who was ahead of Gutekunst on the organizational depth chart as director of football operations.
It did not please Eliot, who left to become assistant general manager of the Browns. And it rankled his father.
“They demonstrated their feelings about him and made a statement that he was too young to do it,” Ron says. “It was absurd.”
Under Eliot Wolf, executive vice president of player personnel, the Patriots have adopted the scouting system his father, Ron, used decades ago. (Eric Canha / Imagn Images)
It is not a coincidence that the Patriots and Seahawks each have players who would have fit the scouting profiles of the Packers of the 1990s, or the Raiders of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
Ron sees Patriots Will Campbell, Christian Gonzalez, Hunter Henry, Jared Wilson, Craig Woodson and several others as players he could have drafted for his teams. On the Seahawks, Nick Emmanwori, Riq Woolen and Grey Zabel are Ron Wolf-type players.
The Seahawks and Patriots are among the few NFL teams (the Packers are another) using the scouting system Ron used decades ago. Eliot adopted the system in 2024 when he was promoted from director of scouting to executive vice president of player personnel. Previously, the Patriots had used the Bill Belichick system, which projects players to roles. With the Wolf system, scouts watch entire game film rather than relying on highlight tapes and cutups.
All three general managers have distinguished themselves with bold quarterback moves.
Shortly after legendary Paul Brown declared that left-handed quarterbacks couldn’t thrive in the NFL because of the backward spin on their passes, Ron took a chance on lefty Stabler, who wound up in the Hall of Fame. He also traded a first-round pick for Favre, who looked like a bust with the Falcons.
Schneider elevated the Seahawks by gambling on a quarterback who was supposed to be too short at 5-feet-11. Russell Wilson, chosen in the third round in 2012, was one of Schneider’s best draft picks. This year, Schneider put together the best team in the NFC with Sam Darnold, who had been discarded by four teams.
Eliot had the third pick of the 2024 draft and needed a quarterback. Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels went first and second, so Eliot had to choose from Drake Maye, Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy and Bo Nix. The player he selected is a candidate for Most Valuable Player.
Eliot had a little help from his father. Ron still likes to evaluate the top quarterbacks in every draft, and he shares his reports with his son. He says Daniels was his top quarterback and Maye the second.
“They got the one I was hoping they’d get,” Ron says. “What I liked about him so much is the rush didn’t bother him.”
“We both liked Drake,” Eliot says. “I wouldn’t say his opinion influenced me. I think if he had come out and said that he hated one of them, maybe that would have had an influence. I listen to him and I respect his opinion a lot, but I have a good staff here that we rely on quite a bit as well.”
Eliot and Ron speak almost daily, catching up on Eliot’s daughters, Daisy, 8, Liza, 6, and Sylvia, 4, and about everything going on with the Patriots. Ron studies the Patriots’ game tape, and Eliot sends him the daily transactions. Eliot, 43, says his father often offers useful advice.
Eliot also uses Schneider as a resource, calling on his experience with management issues.
Ron and Schneider also text occasionally, but Schneider clearly doesn’t need much advice. At 54, he’s in his 16th season as a general manager, and his teams have the second-best record in the NFL since he took over. Schneider also was voted the PFWA Executive of the Year this season.
“To have the success he’s had, what he’s built and how he’s built it, it’s remarkable,” Ron says. “I’m really delighted with it.”
Ron is also proud of his son because he says he made it on his own.
“You need to have a firm belief in yourself, and Eliot has that,” Ron says. “And I don’t think he has an ego. It’s about what’s best for the Patriots, and that’s so important.”
The last time the Wolfs and Schneider were together was in August of 2015 in Canton for Ron’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It was a special day for all.
“I was so overwhelmed with emotion because I knew what it meant to him as such a lover of football,” Eliot says. “And I don’t know that he ever believed he would get in.”
Out of the NFL for 24 years, Ron is like many people his age, spending Florida days reading spy novels and history books, watching spring training games and talking about glory days.
Besides the participants, no one has had more impact on the biggest NFL game of the year.