Put yourself in Thompson's position, folks. If he makes a head coaching change he's effectively saying it'll be 3 years before the Packers will be ready for a deep run into the playoffs.
If he hires a new head coach, that head coach is going to need to put his stamp on things in a big way. They're going to be system changes, personnel changes, philosophy changes, what have you.
How many coaches do you see taking the team, however good it might appear to be on paper, deep into the playoffs before the third year? I can remember two: Seifert and (choke) Switzer). And both those had teams without the kind of personnel weaknesses the packers have.
So, suppose Thompson is concerned about McCarthy having what it takes. If so, and if he's honest with himself, he knows it's likely that the new coach, whoever he is, is going to take more than a year to bring the team where it needs to be. So there's no gain to be had with letting McCarthy go now.
It just isn't going to happen now. It might happen at the end of the season. But it won't happen before then.
"ILikeThePackers39" wrote:
Assuming Thompson does something about the OL personnel (just bear with me - I'm not saying he will), as long as they brought in the right HC the team could easily turn around quickly next season. As for the rest of this season, realistically it's almost done - I'd love to see them beat Dallas, Pitt & the Ravens, and I'll be rooting them on the whole way, but at the moment that's severely unrealistic. Tampa's tougher than teams like the Browns, Lions and Rams, but they aren't a good team.
The reason to fire MmC before the season's out is to send a message that under achieving is unacceptable. Let Philbin run the offense the balance of the year, as far as I'm concerned - run the crap out of the ball and see if Grant can be the guy or not. You don't want to lose guys like Woodson, but being cool with mediocrity could do that.
They can improve on last season's record, and they can make valuable strides on defense, but I have a hard time believing they can make the playoffs after this game - playoff-caliber teams don't lose games like that.
"Wade" wrote: