GREEN BAY — After their special teams units followed up a poor regular season with two catastrophic mistakes with the Super Bowl on the line, the Green Bay Packers are in the market for a new special-teams coordinator.
Packers coach Mike McCarthy fired special-teams coordinator Shawn Slocum Friday afternoon, after watching Slocum's units finish dead last in the 32-team NFL in Dallas Morning News columnist Rick Gosselin's annual rankings and commit two crucial mistakes in the team's NFC Championship Game loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
"I would like to thank Shawn for all of his contributions over the past nine years," McCarthy said in a statement released by the club's public relations department. "He was a positive contributor to our success, including helping us win Super Bowl XLV. We wish Shawn, Michelle and their family the best moving forward."
Slocum had been the Packers' special-teams coordinator since 2009 and was one of only five remaining members of McCarthy's original coaching staff from 2006. McCarthy and Slocum had coached together since their days at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1990s.'
In his first nine seasons as Packers coach, McCarthy had only fired one previous coordinator: Defensive coordinator Bob Sanders, following the 2008 season.
"We have a format that we follow," McCarthy replied Wednesday when asked during his season wrap-up news conference about the process of evaluating assistants. "Obviously [we start by] gathering information, documentation things like that. Then you have start having your exit interviews with the coordinators and you go through all the assistants. It usually takes about a good week or so to do that."
Assistant coaches were supposed to be off all week, after their postseason meetings with McCarthy were postponed in the wake of McCarthy's younger brother Joe's death from a heart attack last week.
The Packers could promote Ron Zook, whom McCarthy hired last year after the ex-Florida and Illinois head coach had been out of football since 2011. Zook coached the Pittsburgh Steelers' special-teams units from 1996 through 1998.
Then again, Zook was part of a staff that was in charge of a special teams group that finished last in the NFL inGosselin's annual special-teams rankings , in which teams are ranked in 22 separate categories. The Packers had an NFL-high seven kicks blocked (two punts, three field goals, two extra points), their kickoff return unit was among the worst in the league, punter Tim Masthay struggled during the second half of the season, and both the kickoff and punt coverage units allowed touchdown returns.
Then came the loss in Seattle, where the field-goal block unit was burned for a 19-yard touchdown on a fake field goal and tight end Brandon Bostick failed to secure an onside kick with just over 2 minutes to play. Had Bostick, who was supposed to serve only as a blocker on the play, recovered the ball or allowed wide receiver Jordy Nelson to do so, the Packers would presumably be playing in Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday
Slocum's replacement will be the Packers' third special-teams coordinator of the McCarthy era. Veteran special teams coach Mike Stock held the job from 2006 through 2008 but retired at McCarthy's urging after the 2008 season.
Jason Wilde wrote: