Mike McCarthy is the former coach of the Green Bay Packers.
I can deal with that. It was time. I thought they would let him finish the season, but I understand making the move now. There’s a lot of reasons why the Packers haven’t been winning lately, but overall, it’s becoming clear that Mike McCarthy is not a part of the solution anymore.
Personally, I think the game just evolved faster than he adapted. Much like Dom Capers, I believe he was a good coach and the game just passed him by.
However, that doesn’t mean his entire tenure was a waste. I have a lot of great memories from his time as a coach and have enjoyed being a fan of the Packers during his tenure.
The vitriol and hate being spewed about him right now isn’t just inhumane and stupidly short-sighted, it’s just plain uncalled for.
Let’s not forget what this guy did for the Packers:
- He took a past-expiration, ice-cold Brett Favre as far as he could go – within OT of the Super Bowl
- He transformed Aaron Rodgers from a Tedford earhole thrower with terrible rookie preseason film to the greatest quarterback in the history of the league
- He always had his team focused and mentally ready in the playoffs and big games, winning and coming darn close to winning, a lot of games they had no business even being in
- He took blame for the team’s shortcomings
- He brought a Lombardi home
You can convince yourself that the success of the last ten years was all Rodgers. That’s fine. Go back and look at Rodgers’s preseason clips from his first few years and tell me if that looks like a guy that is going to carry a team, though. But ignore that if you want and paint a picture of McCarthy as a bumbling fool who lucked into coaching a team with the greatest player ever,
Even then, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything less than a guy who busted his #ss and gave everything he had to try to make your favorite football team successful.
Maybe he’s stupid and incompetent and it’s just starting to show.
Even if that’s the case, the guy is nothing but a man who devoted the last decade and a half of his life to making the Packers better. He was a stand-up citizen in the community and the leader of a team that had one of the most consistently competitive runs in the history of the NFL.
In his last press conference, he said “I’m proud I was part of the Packers family proud to be part of such a great organization.”
You don’t have to like him, you don’t have to think he was a good coach, but if you can’t appreciate what he did here and at least respect him as a human being, odds are pretty good you’ve got bigger problems than the Packers missing the playoffs.