GREEN BAY — It's hard to imagine calling a coach that you intend to fire "outstanding," let alone doing so twice — and so emphatically — the way Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy did in reference to defensive coordinator Dom Capers on Wednesday.
Thus, while McCarthy would not say definitively that the 63-year-old Capers would be back in 2014 as the team's defensive coordinator — McCarthy's evaluation of the coaches will be done over the coming weeks — it would appear that Capers' job is safe despite another up-and-down year on his side of the ball.
Asked in the second question of his 25-minute season-ending news conference Wednesday whether Capers would be back next season, McCarthy replied: "We're not even 72 hours away from the game, OK. Dom Capers is an outstanding football coach. No one will be evaluated today.
"We'll go through just like we did last year. You guys did this to me last year, OK. I'm not going into this looking to make big changes, but I tell you one thing: When I go through this process, there's things that you really like about your program ... and there's things that you don't really like, that you feel need to get better. And with those areas, we'll either change, we'll adjust, or we'll emphasize those particular things. And that's what the process we're going through right now.
"I think Dom Capers as an outstanding football coach, and I'm glad he's on our staff."Asked if he expects to be back next season, Capers replied, "I have no plans of not coaching, I'll say that." Capers has said repeatedly he has no plans to retire.
The Packers entered the postseason having finished tied for 24th in scoring defense (26.8 points per game), 25th in yards allowed (372.3), 25th in rushing yards allowed (125.0), 24th in passing yards allowed (247.3), tied for eighth in sacks (44) and tied for 20th in takeaways (22).
During Capers' first four seasons in Green Bay, the Packers finished seventh in scoring defense in 2009 (18.6 points per game), second in 2010 (15.0), 19th in 2011 (22.4) and 11th in 2012 (21.0); finished second in yardage allowed in 2009 (284.4 yards per game), fifth in 2010 (309.1), 32nd (dead last) in 2011 (411.6) and 11th in 2012 (336.8); were tied for 11th in sacks in 2009 (37), tied for second in 2010 (47), tied for 27th in 2011 (29) and fourth in 2012 (47); and led the NFL in takeaways in 2009 (40), were sixth in 2010 (32), tied for first in 2011 (38) and tied for 19th in 2012 (23).
For his part, Capers didn't seem bothered by speculation about his job status; he was more bothered by the fact that his defense didn't quite do enough in Sunday's season-ending NFC Wild Card playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
"It's part of the business. I don't get involved a lot what other people say," Capers said. "From the time I started in this business. I tell the players, if you commit every day and you do the very best job that you're capable of, then you can always hold your head up high and know you've done the best you're capable of doing, that's what we ask the players to do. There's going to be times things go your way, there's going to be times things go against you. If you know that you've done everything you can, then you can move on."
Capers did acknowledge that the defense would benefit from players with more experience in the system but admitted that he doesn't expect anything to change given the team's approach to building a roster.
"I'd like to think the young guys that we played this year gain experience. That will be valuable for us," he said. 'Ideally you'd like to be able to put a veteran group out there that has experience, but that's certainly not the case in this day and age. The young guys have to come along. We have to have a great offseason with these guys, get them up to speed. And our job as coaches is to figure out, once we see who we have, what we can do and what we can do efficiently enough to go out and win games. We're in kind of that transition mode. I thought we made a lot of strides a year ago, and in certain areas this year the continuity was tough on us at times."
Jason Wilde wrote: