McCarthy and "Close Games"

I see the points the others are making. MM has done a great job working with the team. The players respect him. They talk to him. He's great at working with the super-ego's in the NFL. He's done an amazing job with Rodgers and it looks like Flynn too. He's incredibly flexible, creative and innovative. He'll find ways to attack defenses weaknesses that are just awesome. Overall, I like him in the top 6-10 range of coaches and I still think he has a chance to be a SB winner. He has enough strengths that I like our chances with him better than anyone but the very proven elite.

But just because i like his overall job, it doesn't mean I can't dislike parts of it. I agree with you completely. MM is so flexible and so creative that they don't have an identity at all. They don't really hang their hat on anything. I think that makes for wildly inconsistent offnese. Sacks, throw aways, negative carries. . . .I think all of those go up when you're team is running plays they're not as comfortable with. He leans more toward outcoaching the other team than he does outplaying them. Like you, I don't want to take away his strengths, but I would like to see them develop some form of identity while keeping some of the flexibility and creativity too. He's so good at it, I think it's worked so well for him that he ended up taking it too far.

If we start out next season again stumbling and bumbling around new plays only to find out 8 games in taht we have to go back to basics but be behind the 8ball because our offense was so wildly inconsistent for the first half of the season, there is NO EXCUSE. He's getting to the point in his coaching career where he has to correct these reoccuring problems or his teams won't win championships. It's not the talent in weeks 1-6 or 1-8. They take off after teh offense decides to go back to what they do best. It's the coaching. I'm fairly certain of that. If it happens again next year, I give up hope on him. This is my single biggest issue with McCarthy and because it' costs so many games, all of his talent goes to waste. He has to run the plays we're good at and mix in the otherstuff more slowly throughout the season so we don't stumble three years in a row.