I like Mike.

I do not think he is a bod coach at all. I agree that he and his team of assistant coaches shines last Sunday Night. Mike will be a head coach in this league for a long time.

My concern is this... And it is only a concern.

Look how long he has been coaching this team. It has to be right up there with the longest tenures as a head coach for this storied franchise when one looks back at the last five or six coaches.

I am a firm believer that once the five year mark has been reached a coach kind of loses parts of the team. There are only so many stories, motivational speeches, and personal coaching techniques/style before it gets old news to players.

Now Ted has done a brilliant job with the draft so there has been the turnover to allow this coach to re hash... however it gets old to some of the vets.

Often, a fresh head coach to a good team is all it takes to win the Superbowl.

Just look at Tampa Bay... And how Gruden took a good team, applied a new approach/fresh vigor of motivation and how he took the Bucs to the promised land against my Raiders and his old team.

Nice post K_Buz. Very interesting responses from everyone else.

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The screens were HUGE.
The fake punt.....man....it was good.....but it SHOULD have been completed. Now that it was used, i doubt we could get away with it again.

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See, this is why criticizing play-calling can be downright wrong.

1) Too many shots down field. Um... you realize there are at least 3 receivers on the field at a time running routes, right? And that it is the QB's job to go through his progressions and identify a target for completion. Then, it is actually the QB (not McCarthy) who chooses which WR to throw to.

You knew all that, you say? Well if you did, then you clearly would have realized that perhaps McCarthy wasn't calling plays specifically with the intent of having Rodgers take deep shots. In fact, McCarthy stated in his post-game conference that Rodgers has to be more aware of taking higher-percentage completions underneath as opposed to trying to get a big play by throwing deep.

That hardly sounds like a Coach that decided to throw the ball deep quite heavily.

2) You assume McCarthy called a lot of back-shoulder throws. Um, again, the same reasons above make it incorrect to place blame on McCarthy for these throws.

WRs coach Jimmy Robinson, according to Tom Silverstein who asked him about those errant throws on Monday, said they resulted from miscommunication between Rodgers and his WRs, where Rodgers wanted his WRs to make a specific adjustment to their route and the WRs made a different adjustment or none at all.

In other words, McCarthy did not specifically call those back-shoulder throws. Rodgers saw something specific, wanted his WRs to respond in a certain way, and they did not. Difficult to lay blame on McCarthy for that, unless you expect him to tell his players not to make adjustments based on what the defense does.


So much can happen between a play call being sent to the QB and the play actually developing and finishing. Defenses may line up a certain way thereby taking some throws away, the QB may decide to focus on a particular match-up because he feels it is advantageous, the QB may want a WR to make an adjustment to take advantage of a particular coverage, the QB may make a wrong read, the WR may run a wrong route, the QB may make a really bad throw (ball may slip), etc.

When you blame McCarthy for his playcalling, you are assuming none of these other possibilities (and the list above is not exhaustive) happened. That is quite a big assumption to make, especially considering players are the one who play.

Now the 4th-and-1 calls, I agree with you could have been much better handled. McCarthy dropped the ball particularly with the second time calling Kuhn's number. That is a very valid criticism, and one he has to learn from [Kuhn isn't the sole answer to getting a yard or two on the last down]. But especially based on the words of McCarthy (after the game) and WR Coach Jimmy Robinson, it is simply wrong to criticize McCarthy for the other shortcomings you criticize him for.

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Join the gameday chat sometime. We have a plethora of freaking playcalling GENIUS's up in there. The best part, they're not afraid to vent how stupid a play call is. I'd like to jump in, but I don't know the reason by calling the play. I've read that some OC's will actually call a play they know likely will net less than what they want in order to set up another play.

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You can sit there and defend MM all you want. FACT is, they are not running a WCO, according to fundamentals. They go downfield way too often. They don't rely on short, high percentage completions to get YAC.
As for the back shoulder throws, why are the QB and WRs making different reads? Are they not prepared? Are they getting outsmarted by Brad Childress?
My biggest problem with MM is not his playcalling however. My biggest problem with MM is that his teams do not consistently show up ready to play. In fact they consistenly do NOT seem ready to play. Now go change yourself.

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Outsmarted by the offensive coordinator of the other team? You didn't put much thought into that one, did ya bud? Maybe, Leslie Frazer would be a better name to throw out?

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It seemed like an especially well-called game to me. The only quibbles I have were with a couple of long passes on third and short where Rodgers didn't seem to have enough short yardage options, and also they went with the fullback dive one too many times on fourth and one.

I would've liked to see more than 21 points scored by the offense, but the main problems were the two terrible interceptions and numerous miscommunications between Rodgers and the receivers. Those are very fixable problems. I don't believe Rodgers is going to keep throwing interceptions at his current rate. I'm expecting about half as many the rest of the way.

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Um, maybe because they are getting looks they have not seen before? Like Rodgers said after the game Sunday night, teams have 2 years worth of film on them, and they are using blends of coverages and pressures that are not showing up on film.

For example, usually in pure Cover-2 you do not play man-to-man or press-coverage. Rodgers talked about how this time around the Vikings played Cover-2 shell, but went man-to-man underneath. In other words, it's something unexpected, and Rodgers wanted his receivers to adjust by cutting their routes short and coming back to the ball. His WRs reacted differently. Frankly, when your O-line is playing as well as ours was that night, it's not a stretch to expect the QB to have a couple of seconds extra to throw, therefore you try to use your speed to get separation for a big play. The QB and WR were not on the same page; it happens when you are not expecting certain things.

Now we can blame McCarthy for not having them prepared. But if you are going to do that, then please give us some idea as to how you want McCarthy to prepare his team for things they do not see on the film. Surely you do not expect McCarthy to prepare his team each week for all the possible coverages known in the NFL that they could encounter, do you?

For the record, it is actually position coaches that go through film with their position players, not the Head Coach. You'd expect the HC to prepare a game plan based on what the tape tells him about the other team.

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As for this bit, let's start at the top. If you think you they are going deep too often, surely you must realize that the QB is the one making the throws. In other words, the QB certainly has the option to throw underneath, if his reads merit it. Hard to blame McCarthy.

For the coverages teams have been playing - where the safties are kept outside of the box to play pass first - a good way to clear underneath routes in to have a deep route that forces the safety to double-team the receiver running the deep route. You have to have deep routes.

To sum, it is unfair to criticize McCarthy for too many deep passes because he is not specifically highlighting that the ball be thrown deep (Rodgers can exercise caution to whom he throws). On that point, it is also unfair to criticize him because receivers are running deep routes, because we need them to so that the underneath can open up more. After MM's first year as HC, Ted went out and drafted David Clowney, because one of the issues was that there was no WR with deep speed to open things up underneath. Of course, Clowney was cut but Greg Jennings developed and emerged his second year with that speed we desperately needed. FYI, McCarthy has never claimed to run a pure WCO, he runs a variation of the WCO. He has claimed to be influenced by the way Bill Walsh did things leading up to the game, like the "First 15" (google McCarthy's article for the GB Press Gazette a few years back), but he has not stated he tries to fully emulate Bill Walsh with his offensive system.

I'm all for criticizing McCarthy; I totally agree with your last paragraph, I think it is a very valid critique of McCarthy as coach. However, if I think you are unfairly criticizing McCarthy then I will also call you out on it. Just last week I wrote up a post in response to NSD where I lashed out at McCarthy's terrible play calling - especially in the Dolphins game. Yes, McCarthy has had moments where he has failed as a play caller and coach. But some of the issues you cited about the game in reference to McCarthy are unfairly blaming McCarthy for something he should not solely be blamed for.

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Here's the main difference in this debate. Nerdmann is providing generalized rebuttals; AADP is providing specific examples.

It pretty much sums up the most contentious debates on this board.

Hats off, AADP. Your reasoning is compelling because it's thorough. Nerd -- how about showing an inkling of tenacity in grounding your arguments?

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