Aside from an addition to the family on the eve of training camp, Mike McCarthy swears that being a first-time winner of the Super Bowl hasn't changed him as a head coach.
Players vouched for that, saying their personable, forward-thinking boss hasn't been stuck on living in the glorious past of winning the league title in February.
"No complacency, don't let it set in," safety Charlie Peprah said of McCarthy's camp-opening speech to the team Saturday morning. "He put a lot of responsibility on the vets to make sure that doesn't happen and just stay hungry, and have a hunter mentality versus being hunted.
"He kind of made it clear we're not defending anything. That was (Super Bowl) 45; 46 is 46. This is a new year, a new Super Bowl, we're hunting a championship like every other team. Last year doesn't matter to anyone. That's kind of the mindset."
The first week of football after the 4 1/2-month lockout for the reigning champions featured more subtractions than additions - not counting the arrival of Isabella McCarthy, to whom the coach's wife, Jessica, gave birth July 28 just hours before the players reported for work the next morning.
Although Green Bay's championship roster from the end of last season stayed mostly intact, the team had a handful of players leave in free agency. Most notable was the starting duo of defensive end Cullen Jenkins and left guard Daryn Colledge, who drew sizable five-year pacts from Philadelphia and Arizona, respectively.
"Rest assured that fans should know we're doing everything we can to be a good football team," said general manager Ted Thompson, who stuck to his conservative guns in not being active in the opening commotion of player movement.
Instead, Thompson ensured the Packers will remain one of the youngest teams in the league by releasing five veteran players - right tackle Mark Tauscher, defensive end Justin Harrell and linebackers Nick Barnett, Brandon Chillar and Brady Poppinga - to give the team ample spending flexibility under the salary cap.
All of them were among the 15 players who were on injured reserve for Green Bay in the postseason.
Getting the likes of tight end Jermichael Finley, running back Ryan Grant, defensive end Mike Neal and safety Morgan Burnett from that list should be a boon for what many view as a team capable of becoming the NFL's first repeat champion since New England in 2004-05.
McCarthy just isn't looking backward.
"We're not defending anything," he asserted, coining last season's Super Bowl run Mountain 45.
"We've climbed Mountain 45. It was a great climb ... but we don't get any wins, and there's nothing really to gain from being the champion last year," McCarthy said. "This is a whole new journey. This is a whole new football team. We're at the bottom of the mountain just like everyone else is right now."
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the MVP of Super Bowl XLV, echoed his coach's sentiments and isn't ready to put the Packers back in the Super Bowl in Indianapolis just yet.
"Every year is different," Rodgers said. "It's different guys, different dilemmas, different adversity you have to deal with. You don't know what's going to happen as far as injuries or who's going to be playing, the roster the way it looks now."