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Green Bay On the sideline with the play card in his hand and a notion in his head, Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy can sometimes be a walking, talking, headset-wearing bundle of contradiction.

There's the McCarthy who professes to want a physical football team able to run it up the gut anytime it wants and use the Old-Man-Winter advantage it has at Lambeau Field in the latter months of the year.

Then there's the McCarthy who has thrown the ball 45 or more times in two of the last three games, one of them a bitter loss at Chicago and the other an overtime loss to Washington on the road. Both games begged for a running game to control the ball and take the opposing crowd out of it.

So, what in the name of a 38.7-to-61.3 run-pass ratio (his 2010 numbers) is McCarthy thinking when he's holding that card? Is he really as pass-happy as he appears? Or does the Packers' 17th ranking in pass attempts per game this year prove otherwise?

Since his hiring in 2006, McCarthy's run-to-pass ratio is 40-60, compared to the league average of approximately 45-55 during that same time. Most of those who have watched McCarthy's teams since 2006 would say he has little regard for the running game and prefers to pass.

"If you want to get into a philosophical discussion, I have zero interest in the way some people are trying to make this, we're just a passing team," McCarthy said in a wide-ranging interview about his run philosophy. "That's not true. Judge me after 10 weeks. Judge me after 16. We're not a seven-on-seven team by no means, we never will be."

At the same time, McCarthy admits he harbors the same feeling many West Coast play-callers do, including former Packers coach Mike Holmgren - that it's easier to complete a short pass than gain yards running the football, especially if your team is built around a great quarterback.

When told there would seem to be more variables and moving parts in a pass play than a running play, McCarthy completely disagreed. In his opinion, it's more likely a quarterback and receiver are going to connect on a short pass than a running back is going to find a hole and gain positive yardage.

"If you run the football and nine guys get their block and one guy messes up his block, what happens?" McCarthy said. "He could get tackled for a loss. In the passing game, does it take nine of them to get it right?"

Reminded that his receivers dropped seven balls in the loss to Washington on Sunday, McCarthy said he still believes it's advantageous for him to pass the ball when the defense is going to give him an easy completion.

"What about the times where you go to run the ball and they have more than you have," McCarthy said of overloading a side. "And you have 20 guys from the hash all the way over and you have Greg Jennings over there or Jermichael Finley and he (the quarterback) jumps up and throws it to him.

"He gets 7 yards or it could have been a touchdown. They go, that's a pass, but it's really a run. How many of those do we have in a year? Three a game the way we play."

McCarthy said it would be unwise to draw conclusions about his run philosophy from the Washington game. He said he went into it fully intending to run as much as he passed, mostly out of two- and three-tight end sets.

But on the second play from scrimmage, tight end Donald Lee injured his chest after taking a hit and fumbling and Finley tore cartilage in his knee tackling the player who recovered. For most of the last 50 minutes of the game, his tight ends were Tom Crabtree and rookie Andrew Quarless.

"When I want to run the ball, we put our hand in the dirt and I don't give a lick what they line up with over there," McCarthy said. "We lost pretty much all of that with those two injuries Sunday afternoon. Those are the facts.

"Now we have adjusted runs, where we're going to go to the line of scrimmage and run it, but if you have more over there than I do, then hell, I'm not running it over there. Either run it over there or throw the ball. That's the way we played on Sunday."

The result was 46 pass attempts and 17 runs, four of them carries by quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Despite the low number of runs, the Packers gained 157 yards rushing, largely on the strength of Brandon Jackson's 71-yard carry. However, Jackson and John Kuhn averaged 4.7 yards per carry on the other 12 rushes.

The contradiction on this one is that McCarthy thinks Jackson could fill the void left by the season-ending ankle injury to Ryan Grant, but that he needs more carries to be productive. How is he going to get more carries if the offensive philosophy is to replace some runs with passes?

What's more, McCarthy believes his offensive line has played well. He said the performance against the Detroit Lions in Week 4 was the best the line had played "in quite some time." Yet the only time he really stuck with the run game was in the final 6 minutes of that game.

"I want to win and I know all the variables for my team," McCarthy countered. "There are more variables than he just ran it or passed it. I think if you're going to evaluate a play-caller and you say he runs it too much or passes it too much, then you're not really evaluating the offense, in my opinion.

"That's why when I get asked about it I'll answer, 'That's convenient,' sometimes."

To be fair, McCarthy did run the ball 33 times against Philadelphia and 27 times against Buffalo, and it's absolutely correct that the strength of his offense is the quarterback and his receivers. In addition, he lost Grant in Week 1, and it has taken Jackson time to adjust to being the No. 1 back.

General manager Ted Thompson could have done McCarthy a big favor by trading for running back Marshawn Lynch - sources said players and some coaches were strongly in favor of it - but maybe Thompson thought Lynch would be wasted in McCarthy's offense.

Offensive coordinator Joe Philbin works with McCarthy each week in developing the game plan and said the two still have confidence in the running game despite the absence of a big-time runner. They think the differences in Jackson, John Kuhn and recently acquired Dimitri Nance offer challenges to opposing defenses.

But let's face it, none of them is Grant or Lynch.

"I think we're capable of moving the ball on the ground against anybody," Philbin said. "I think our guys feel that way. Now we have to go out and do it."

It's anyone's guess what the play card against Miami will show Sunday. Likely it's filled with passes McCarthy thinks he can complete on the Dolphins secondary, but with Lee returning and Crabtree and Quarless having a full week to prepare for more prominent roles, maybe it's half-filled with runs.

McCarthy said he'll always be about scoring points and not 50-50 ratios, but he also said that when it's all said and done the running game will have made an impact.

"Now, are the (passing) numbers higher than what I want them to be? Yeah," he said. "But to me, these conversations are really about after 16 games. I don't really get why I have to ride this merry-go-round every year where somebody picks up a stat sheet and goes, 'Uh-oh, they need to run it more.' "

"It's Week 5, it's Week 6. It goes that way. It's no different than an individual player not having his opportunity. If you want to make a point about it, OK, but I have to answer six questions about it, I don't view it that way. I don't think we have an issue running the football. I think the fact of the matter is when we wanted to run the football we've run it. I feel good about where we are running the football."