A scared man cannot win

[dissident94]

This is a quote I just read from a JSO article. I think it sums it up pretty fairly. A scared man punts on 4 and 1 when you are running it down their throats. Those men lose.

[dissident94]

That quote was from MM

[FritzDontBlitz]

yes i read that too. i made it my new signature comment. i think its just the right mentality to be teaching to the pack.

[fan4life]

Some men on the Pack have had that attitude for a long time. The fact that they now have a coach who understands that mentality bodes well for them as well as us.

[Joemailman]

A perfect example of his quote was his decision to call for a reverse on 4th and 1. If that doesn't work, a lot of people would have been calling that a stupid call, and I might have been one of them. I like the fact that McCarthy doesn't panic. That reminds me of Holmgren. I also like the fact that he does what he thinks is right, and doesn't seem to worry about the consequences if something goes wrong. That reminds me of Favre. He's made some mistakes, but he's not intimidated by anything.

[vince]

A perfect example of his quote was his decision to call for a reverse on 4th and 1. If that doesn't work, a lot of people would have been calling that a stupid call, and I might have been one of them. I like the fact that McCarthy doesn't panic. That reminds me of Holmgren. I also like the fact that he does what he thinks is right, and doesn't seem to worry about the consequences if something goes wrong. That reminds me of Favre. He's made some mistakes, but he's not intimidated by anything.
Holmgren was/is much more conservative in his decisions than McCarthy has been - besides the Chicago fiasco. Perhaps it was because he had a more effective defense most of the time...

[HarveyWallbangers]

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=522333

McCarthy shows his offensive chops
Cliff Christl

One would hope that the Green Bay Packers' victory over the Miami Dolphins will at least silence all the gibberish about Mike McCarthy being one of the worst coaching hires ever.

Sunday's game easily could have become a defensive struggle with end Jason Taylor and linebacker Zach Thomas of the Dolphins dominating play and dictating the outcome.

The Dolphins were a 1-5 team coming in and aren't as good defensively as they were three, four years ago when former coordinator Jim Bates had Pro Bowlers Sam Madison and Patrick Surtain playing cornerback. But they were still ranked fourth in the league in defense last week and Pro Football Weekly in its pre-season ratings of players based on feedback from scouts had Taylor and Thomas ranked among the top 50 players in the NFL. In fact, Taylor was ranked the 11th best player in the game and the second best defender.

Moreover, the brain trust of the Miami defense is headed up by Nick Saban, a Bill Belichick disciple, and media wonder boy ever since his name was first bandied about as a head coaching candidate. Saban's defensive coordinator is Dom Capers, who was Bill Cowher's first defensive coordinator in Pittsburgh and also a former head coach. Mike Mullarkey, another former coordinator under Cowher and another former head coach, is Miami's offensive coordinator.

Those are some impressive resumes.

Nonetheless, despite losing their starting left tackle just before kickoff and watching Taylor devour Chad Clifton's fill-in, rookie Daryn Colledge, on two plays in the first quarter that resulted in sacks and fumbles, McCarthy and his staff more than matched wits with their Miami counterparts.

The Packers adjusted their schemes, found a way to neutralize Taylor and prevented the Dolphins' defense from dictating the course of the game. At various times, McCarthy mixed up rolling the pocket toward and away from Taylor, used motion and shifts to get the match-ups he wanted, and kept the Dolphins' defense off balance with his play selection.

Obviously, one game doesn't make a coaching career. Beating Saban in his first head-to-head encounter with him doesn't necessarily make McCarthy a better coach. And it certainly doesn't assure that McCarthy will be successful in his time in Green Bay.

He faced a challenging rebuilding project and it might only get more challenging if Brett Favre retires any time soon. Turning the Packers into winners before his initial three-year contract expires might be an impossible task.

But it seems clear six games into this season, and especially after Sunday, that McCarthy isn't in over his head.

Sean Payton, Scott Linehan, Eric Mangini or any of the other first-year head coaches might turn out to be more successful than McCarthy, but their credentials aren't any more impressive.

McCarthy spent eight years working for Marty Schottenheimer, one of the winningest coaches of all time. McCarthy took over a New Orleans' offense in 2000 that had ranked among the bottom three in the league in three of the previous four seasons and finished 10th twice, 11th and never lower than 19th in total yards in his five years as coordinator. He had worked in the NFL for 14 years.

Tell me how Payton in 10 years as an assistant, including one as a play-caller in Dallas and only three others as an offensive coordinator, all with the New York Giants, where he was stripped of his play-calling duties in their NFC championship season; or Linehan in his four years in the NFL, three of which were spent as a coordinator under Mike Tice; or Mangini in his five years as a position coach and only one as a coordinator in New England were any more qualified than McCarthy to become head coaches.

Ditto for Detroit's Rod Marinelli, who was never even a coordinator; or Houston's Gary Kubiak, who never called the plays during his 11 seasons as offensive coordinator under Mike Shanahan.

Let's face it, there are so many opportunities today to spout opinions on talk radio, on television, on the Internet and in newspapers; and so many people spouting them who sit in studios or write from home without ever covering games, much less practice, that most of what you read and hear is mindless babble.

How in the world are those people qualified to pass judgment on football coaches? What makes me or any other writer or broadcaster, especially those of us without extensive football backgrounds, qualified to assess who might make a good head coach and who might not?

When you see writers or others, for example, offering rankings of assistant coaches, it's a farce. If they're doing it, it's either to fill space, because their egos have run amok or they want to toss a bouquet to a source.

Even the network analysts, most of whom are ex-coaches and players, aren't qualified to make those judgments, at least for the most part. The opinion of a John Madden or a Ron Jaworski or a Cris Collinsworth, the ones who do their homework and watch game film, might provide interesting insight, but they're usually smart enough to be somewhat guarded about what they say.

Even general managers and personnel directors and other scouts aren't qualified to make those calls unless maybe they've worked closely with somebody over the course of at least a season or two.

So just about anybody who has voiced the opinion that general manager Ted Thompson made a bad hire when he chose McCarthy was writing or speaking out of ignorance.

Maybe they'll be proven right. But to slander a coach's reputation based on no more than a thimble full of knowledge is ridiculous, as well as being blatantly unfair. And if anybody needed to be convinced of that, Sunday's game should have provided the proof.

[VegasPackFan]

Uncle Cliffy cracks me up, man