McCarthy Plan to Help Favre
Coach has plan to help Favre
McCarthy wants QB to return to basic offense
By TOM SILVERSTEIN
tsilverstein@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 29, 2006
Orlando, Fla. - If Brett Favre returns for another season, Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy isn't presumptuous enough to think he personally can return the quarterback to his greatest heights.
But given the chance to work with Favre again, McCarthy is convinced he can put him in a position to be the quarterback he was before he threw a career-high 29 interceptions during a 4-12 abomination last year. It's a big job given Favre is coming off his worst season statistically since 1993.
It’s too late in Favre's career for a Mike Holmgren-like taming, but McCarthy thinks his offense will provide the vehicle for Favre to finish his career on a high note. It's a pretty simple plan, too. Go back to what worked best for him and take desperation out of the equation.
"We’re going back to the more core base concepts in the earlier years that I truly believe in," McCarthy said Wednesday during a coaches breakfast at the NFL owners meetings. "If you have a guy like Brett Favre, he has more reps piled up in the base concepts in this offense probably than anybody in the league because he’s played the longest. That's (something) you need to take advantage of, to put him in a position he's very familiar with and let players make plays instead of always out-scheming the defense.
"Obviously you have to have variations to attack the defense. But I think it's important to go back to the base things he's done over and over and over again. That's when guys are in a comfort zone."
Before McCarthy gets a chance to refresh a relationship with the 36-year-old Favre that began in 1999 when McCarthy was quarterbacks coach under Ray Rhodes, he has to get the official word that Favre is coming back. The Packers are expecting a decision by Saturday, the due date for a $3 million roster bonus due for Favre, and a source with ties to Favre who was attending the meetings said they would probably hear something this weekend.
Still, there are no guarantees that Favre won't request more time to think about whether to come back. People close to him question whether the Packers have done enough to improve their offensive talent, but it's unclear whether Favre shares the same opinion.
All signs point toward Favre returning, but despite a conversation with general manager Ted Thompson earlier in the week and calls from McCarthy on Wednesday, Favre has not announced a decision.
McCarthy said he is prepared to move on if Favre retires, but he really wants a shot at coaching him again, in part, because he’s confident he can relieve some of the pressure  real or self-inflicted  that seems to lead to Favre’s poor decision-making. His plan is to install a West Coast-style of offense that more resembles Holmgren’s philosophies than those of coach Mike Sherman and his offensive coordinator, Tom Rossley.
McCarthy refused to criticize the way Favre was handled by the previous coaching staff and didn’t say he thought his system was better. But he said his belief is that reverting to an offense that relies heavily on the running game, throws often to the backs and uses big receivers running slants and shallow crossing patterns will best fit Favre’s talents.
He said he is not opposed to the vertical nature of the Sherman / Rossley offense, but he is more interested in running routes that allow the quarterback to get the ball to his receiver and let him make yards after the catch. More than anything, he wants to do a few things very well and force defenses to deal with that.
"I just know in 1999, in being in a West Coast offense when I worked with (offensive coordinator) Sherman Lewis, he kind of picked up where Mike Holmgren left off when he went to Seattle," McCarthy said. "I still run a lot of those base concepts. Those are things I believe in and they've held up over time.
"You won’t see a lot of that on the films the last two years in Green Bay. They’ve kind of gone down a different road and we’re going to kind of go back to the stuff we did in '99 and some of those base concepts."
McCarthy does want to spend some time working on fundamentals with Favre and he admitted that if the quarterback does come back he’d prefer that he attend the minicamps and off-season workouts. Last year, Sherman allowed Favre to skip the minicamps and some people thought it sent a bad message to the team and affected Favre's overall performance.
"I’m not in favor of a guy missing the whole off-season," McCarthy said.
Favre threw too many interceptions last year, McCarthy said, and regardless of the reasons, he knows it can’t be that way this year. He declined to say how much of it was the result of poor play around Favre and how much of it was Favre himself. He also declined to rip Favre for his play.
"I can only tell you about today and what I’ve seen," McCarthy said. "You know, 29 interceptions is obviously an astronomical number. And it’s something we need to improve on as a football team. But to sit here and say that I’m making excuses for Brett Favre, I would disagree with that."
Currently, McCarthy has a quarterback school in session in Green Bay. Second-year pro Aaron Rodgers and newcomer Tom Arth are taking part in the fundamentals-based workouts, which are complemented with classroom sessions. It's unclear whether McCarthy would expect Favre to attend any of the school, but he definitely wants him there when the team holds its first minicamp in May.
What McCarthy hopes to do for Favre is remove the feeling that he is the lone producer on the team. Last year, injuries stripped the offense of most of its offensive talent, leaving only Favre and wide receiver Donald Driver to shoulder the load.
McCarthy hopes he can establish a run game that takes the desperation out of Favre’s thinking and allows him to keep executing the play-action and bootleg throws he excels at. And then keep the playbook focused.
"He’s been in the same offense his whole career," McCarthy said. "I think it will be an advantage to the football team and the quarterback if we go back to those base concepts and let him play. I've done the volume thing. I don’t believe volume is the way to go. I think it’s important to put players in positions that they’re very comfortable with and let them play."
This is what Lombardi did when he showed up here. Simplified it and got back to basics.
