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After a regular season that was near perfection at 15-1 the Green Bay Packers came out completely flat and out of sync against the New York Giants in the NFC Divisional round playoff. It cost them dearly as they are now left to reflect on what could have been. Packers fans have heard from Ryan Grant here on SRI regarding his costly fumble in the playoff game against the Giants. Now hear from Mike McCarthy on what he believes went wrong for the Green Bay Packers in the postseason. Mike McCarthy joined The Big 1070 in Madison with The Mike Heller Show to discuss his emotions after the loss to the New York Giants in the playoffs, the lack of execution and fundamentals contributing to the Packers playoff loss to New York, the new changes to the Packers off-season program due to the new CBA, and getting ready for the NFL draft.
What has been the range of emotions you have had since the loss to the Giants?
“I’m obviously disappointed like everybody is. This is an understatement. It was an opportunity where we did not put our best foot forward – like any opportunity in life you don’t take advantage of it – it’s something you are going to live with some level of regret. I know that our football team feels that way. It’s a hard opportunity. There’s lessons of life that were learned throughout the week and a hard lesson of our professional lives that we learned on Sunday, so we can all grow from it.”
Tell me last week we talked about execution. Whoever won this game did it on execution and fundamentals. Was that what transpired?
“Definitely. I just think the statistics of how we handled the football and how we tackled in that game. The game of football comes down to blocking, which is you blocking your opponent or getting off blocks, tackling, breaking tackles or tackling your opponent and handling the football or taking it away or taking care of it. It’s something inbreded into a football team that trains to play on Sunday’s. I know it is in ours. We’re excessive about it. For us to fail on two of the three the way we did was a big part of the outcome.”
What kind of changes are there in the off-season with the new CBA?
“The new CBA has taken the off-season program out and broken it down from 15 weeks to 9 weeks with the first 3 weeks of that we have no interaction at all from player to coach. It’s strictly training and conditioning. It’s really put a lot of limits on the off-season program and frankly it’s a detriment to the development of younger players in this league in my opinion.”
Is free agency and the NFL draft the next two steps for the organization from a personnel standpoint?
“Yes, as a staff our coaches have done evaluations on our current players. I will coach the Pro Bowl next week and then we’ll be back February 6th. We’ll start our scheme evaluation and going through every call that we’ve made this year and evaluate and start building the – basically start building the playbook for next year and we’ll start splitting our day between doing that – getting ready for the college draft and getting ready for our players to return in April.”
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