Tarlam!
09-09-2006, 06:15 AM
Posted September 9, 2006
"Elegantly Borrowed from PackerNEWS.com (http://www.packersnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060909/PKR07/60908080/1989)"
Hello, everyone. This is my first crack at writing a newspaper column, and I hope you’ll find the topics engaging.
When you step back and take a look at all that’s happening this week with our season opener, it’s incredibly inspiring.
It’s my first game as a head coach, it’s against our biggest rival and it’s our first opportunity to re-establish the Lambeau advantage that has been such a big part of successful teams here.
We’ve been preparing for this since January, and I know our players will be ready.
It has really gone fast, and it seems like I just got hired. We’ve had so much to do in such a short period of time. But this is the week that everything you do from the end of last season until now is targeted for. It’s about getting off on the right foot.
Everyone remembers his important “first†games, so I’m sure this one will be etched in my memory.
I still remember my first game in the NFL, as an offensive assistant with Kansas City in 1993. We were playing the Tampa Bay Bucs down at the Big Sombrero, and there was all sorts of anticipation because Joe Montana had just come to Kansas City in a trade.
Montana threw two big-time touchdown passes and injured his wrist, but we won 27-3 and it was the start of a year when we went to the AFC championship game and just missed going to the Super Bowl.
Tampa Bay was no big rival of ours in K.C., like Chicago is here. That’s what creates even more anticipation for this first game.
It’s the best rivalry game in the NFL. The thing that makes rivalries special is the same intensity you have internally, you have externally.
Our players, and everyone in the organization, really look forward to playing the Chicago Bears. And when you step outside, you can crank it up even more.
When Chicago and Green Bay are together, that’s all people talk about.
I certainly got a taste of that intensity my one year here in 1999.
The first game was home, right after Walter Payton’s funeral, and it was about as even as you could get. We lost on a blocked field goal on the last play, 14-13.
We were going right down the field, and they couldn’t stop us. Brett and I talked about that game the other day because he wanted to go for the touchdown, but it was about a 25-yard field goal, a chip shot.
The rematch down there was just nuts. It was 33 degrees and raining sideways, one of the most miserable weather games I’d ever been to. You couldn’t get away from the rain because it was coming down sideways and would hit your face and just freeze.
I remember our trainer Pepper Burruss or somebody saying, “It’s 33 degrees. I wish it would go down one notch and snow.â€Â
You kept waiting for it to turn to snow, and it didn’t the whole game. It was amazing.
We just ran the ball like mad with De’Mond Parker |(113 yards) and Basil Mitchell (47 yards). We got down 10-0 early, but Parker had two touchdowns in the fourth quarter and we pulled away (35-19).
We felt with that win, we got back to establishing our dominance of the Bears. Before the blocked field goal, Green Bay had won 10 straight against Chicago.
We want to get that and the Lambeau advantage back, and it starts on Sunday.
In Kansas City under Marty Schottenheimer, we had an incredible home record at Arrowhead. The stadium was loud, and nobody liked coming there.
When you go back to the mid-’90s, when they had their best teams here, home games meant seven or eight wins a year. People have told me that Mike Holmgren used to say they were going to go 8-0 at home and just had to split their road games to be 12-4. We’d love to get back to the point where we can look at things that way.
We can do it if everyone on the coaching staff, in the locker room, in the organization and sitting in the stands buys into it. It’s like anything you want to accomplish. You have to emphasize it and build the importance of it and feed off it. It’s a mind-set. It’s an attitude. You’re creating such a higher level of confidence when we’re at home.
What better time to create it than in the first game, and against the Bears.
Mike McCarthy is the coach of the Green Bay Packers. His column appears in Packers Preview each week.
[/url]
"Elegantly Borrowed from PackerNEWS.com (http://www.packersnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060909/PKR07/60908080/1989)"
Hello, everyone. This is my first crack at writing a newspaper column, and I hope you’ll find the topics engaging.
When you step back and take a look at all that’s happening this week with our season opener, it’s incredibly inspiring.
It’s my first game as a head coach, it’s against our biggest rival and it’s our first opportunity to re-establish the Lambeau advantage that has been such a big part of successful teams here.
We’ve been preparing for this since January, and I know our players will be ready.
It has really gone fast, and it seems like I just got hired. We’ve had so much to do in such a short period of time. But this is the week that everything you do from the end of last season until now is targeted for. It’s about getting off on the right foot.
Everyone remembers his important “first†games, so I’m sure this one will be etched in my memory.
I still remember my first game in the NFL, as an offensive assistant with Kansas City in 1993. We were playing the Tampa Bay Bucs down at the Big Sombrero, and there was all sorts of anticipation because Joe Montana had just come to Kansas City in a trade.
Montana threw two big-time touchdown passes and injured his wrist, but we won 27-3 and it was the start of a year when we went to the AFC championship game and just missed going to the Super Bowl.
Tampa Bay was no big rival of ours in K.C., like Chicago is here. That’s what creates even more anticipation for this first game.
It’s the best rivalry game in the NFL. The thing that makes rivalries special is the same intensity you have internally, you have externally.
Our players, and everyone in the organization, really look forward to playing the Chicago Bears. And when you step outside, you can crank it up even more.
When Chicago and Green Bay are together, that’s all people talk about.
I certainly got a taste of that intensity my one year here in 1999.
The first game was home, right after Walter Payton’s funeral, and it was about as even as you could get. We lost on a blocked field goal on the last play, 14-13.
We were going right down the field, and they couldn’t stop us. Brett and I talked about that game the other day because he wanted to go for the touchdown, but it was about a 25-yard field goal, a chip shot.
The rematch down there was just nuts. It was 33 degrees and raining sideways, one of the most miserable weather games I’d ever been to. You couldn’t get away from the rain because it was coming down sideways and would hit your face and just freeze.
I remember our trainer Pepper Burruss or somebody saying, “It’s 33 degrees. I wish it would go down one notch and snow.â€Â
You kept waiting for it to turn to snow, and it didn’t the whole game. It was amazing.
We just ran the ball like mad with De’Mond Parker |(113 yards) and Basil Mitchell (47 yards). We got down 10-0 early, but Parker had two touchdowns in the fourth quarter and we pulled away (35-19).
We felt with that win, we got back to establishing our dominance of the Bears. Before the blocked field goal, Green Bay had won 10 straight against Chicago.
We want to get that and the Lambeau advantage back, and it starts on Sunday.
In Kansas City under Marty Schottenheimer, we had an incredible home record at Arrowhead. The stadium was loud, and nobody liked coming there.
When you go back to the mid-’90s, when they had their best teams here, home games meant seven or eight wins a year. People have told me that Mike Holmgren used to say they were going to go 8-0 at home and just had to split their road games to be 12-4. We’d love to get back to the point where we can look at things that way.
We can do it if everyone on the coaching staff, in the locker room, in the organization and sitting in the stands buys into it. It’s like anything you want to accomplish. You have to emphasize it and build the importance of it and feed off it. It’s a mind-set. It’s an attitude. You’re creating such a higher level of confidence when we’re at home.
What better time to create it than in the first game, and against the Bears.
Mike McCarthy is the coach of the Green Bay Packers. His column appears in Packers Preview each week.
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