In assessing last season, McCarthy said he thought the defense got too far away from running the traditional 3-4 defense. The year before, when the Packers won the Super Bowl, Capers played about 70% nickel defense because his cornerbacks were playing so well and his pass rush had linebacker Clay Matthews and end Cullen Jenkins leading the charge.
After losing Jenkins in free agency, the Packers never found anyone to take pressure off Matthews and the performance of the secondary dropped dramatically. McCarthy said he found the defense did not react well to the risk-taking opponents who came in and tried to match points with the Packers' prolific offense.
"I've never been this explosive on offense and it's a good lesson for all of us," McCarthy said. "The opposing offense plays with a lot more confidence against your defense just because the fact that your offense is explosive. (They're) like, 'We have to go in there and score 30. It's the only chance we've got.'
"So teams played us extremely aggressive. We need to do a better job of stopping that on defense. We got into a year that we can never get into again on defense."
Part of the solution, McCarthy said, might be getting back to a more traditional 3-4 defense and doing what the scheme was intended to do, which is put pressure on the quarterback.
"Frankly, we were so explosive on offense, maybe we weren't ready, maybe we went to too much sub (nickel)," he said. "We played so much sub defense the last couple of years, we'd like to get back to playing more base and doing some of the things this defense was built on.
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