Pt 1
I witnessed every single snap of the Mike McCarthy era in Green Bay.
It isn’t often that the two teams that I follow most closely in the NFL overlap, but this is probably the most significant one in a long, long time (no disrespect to Randall Cobb intended). They have one of the most historic and intense rivalries in the entire sport, and given that I was born in Wisconsin and raised on Packers football only to eventually earn a job following the Cowboys for a living in 1998, I may be in a unique position.
I considered showing you the Xs and Os to demonstrate how things will be different than during Jason Garrett’s regime, but I think there will be plenty of time for that. I also considered looking at the hire from the perspective of how Stephen and Jerry Jones arrived at this decision, perhaps offering you a few freshly baked second guesses on which direction they should have gone.
Instead, I have come to the conclusion that the best way to handle this might be from the same perspective I will use to analyze draft prospects in the days and weeks to come. When I break down a prospect, I grab a stack of tapes and tell you everything I have learned about a guy; what I like, what my concerns are and how he fits with the Dallas Cowboys (if they pick him). Well, this one is pretty clear: The Cowboys have picked McCarthy, and I have watched this man’s every move since 2006. This profile will be significantly longer than that of a normal draft prospect, but that is because I am not relying on my normal 200 snaps to evaluate a prospect, but over 200 games — 204 in the regular season and 18 more in the post-season, including four NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl at AT&T Stadium. There is one human who has ever won a Super Bowl in North Texas, and the Cowboys have hired him as the ninth coach in franchise history. Let’s get to work!
MIKE MCCARTHY – HEAD COACH
Mike McCarthy is 56 years old and was born and raised in Pittsburgh. He played college football at the community college and NAIA level, attending Baker University in Kansas before staying in the area as a graduate assistant for two seasons at Fort Hays State, several hours to the west. He returned home to Pittsburgh in 1989 to begin as a graduate assistant at Pitt for three seasons, at which time he famously also worked in a tollbooth on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Nearly every single biographical piece you ever see of the coach will definitely not miss that item of trivia. It serves as proof that he was willing to do whatever it might take to make a living in football.
He was able to work on the staff of Marty Schottenheimer from 1993-1998, first as a quality-control man low on the staff willing to do anything to help (you perhaps have seen video of him catching passes from Joe Montana in 1993-1994), then doing well enough to be thrust into the job of QB coach from 1995-1998 in Kansas City, where the Chiefs featured post-Montana QBs in Steve Bono, Elvis Grbac and Rich Gannon. Schottenheimer’s reign and his ultra-conservative view of football had played out by 1998 and a 7-9 season eventually got him fired. McCarthy was looking for work.
He landed in Green Bay in 1999 in what will be best known as the forgotten year of head coach Ray Rhodes, but McCarthy became Brett Favre’s QB coach. He was part of a challenging and dramatic 8-8 season; Mike Holmgren had just left for Seattle, interested in “buying his own groceries.” Rhodes and his staff probably never got a fair chance, and the staff was fired after the team missed the playoffs for the first time in a very long time. McCarthy needed a job again, and this time he was on to New Orleans, where fellow Pittsburgher Jim Haslett was assembling a staff and needed an offensive coordinator. In five seasons as New Orleans’ OC, the Saints were always in the top half of the league in points scored. McCarthy was generally seen as a success due to his work with young QB Aaron Brooks, RB Deuce McAllister and WR Joe Horn.
By 2005, he would join Baltimore defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, who had just been named the new coach in San Francisco and would bring McCarthy to town to work with the No. 1 pick they would draft. The question was whether they would take hometown 49ers fan Aaron Rodgers with that pick or Utah QB Alex Smith. McCarthy preferred Smith, and the franchise agreed, paving the road for the irony of never really spending too much time on Smith but 13 seasons with Rodgers (who like other great athletes, has a memory like an elephant and perhaps never really forgot the perceived slight). Anyway, that year in San Francisco featured a lot of Tim Rattay and Ken Dorsey at QB. Predictably, it went poorly. The 4-12 record set the tone for the Mike Nolan run in San Francisco, but in no way affected the desire for Green Bay to hire him 14 years ago this week.
The Packers knew that McCarthy would be perfect for two jobs in Green Bay, and his 1999 season certainly prepared him for the incredibly unique challenge that is the Packers head coaching position. Job No. 1 was to revive the career of Brett Favre — as the legendary quarterback had fallen to the very bottom of the NFL in 2005. Job No. 2 would be to ultimately develop Rodgers when Favre’s career ended. Somehow, the three-time MVP had rediscovered the freelancing and turnover-prone ways of his early career, and it had only gotten worse under Mike Sherman. The lack of real weapons around him continued to cause issues and the rift between QB and coach widened when GM Ted Thompson passed on the opportunity to sign, trade or draft help for Favre. Instead, he drafted his replacement.
That’s certainly not the best environment to start your career as a head coach, as there was drama and tension around each corner. McCarthy would have to figure out how a terribly unique job — perhaps the only one of its kind where there is no owner at all — would work with arguably the most powerful player in sports under your charge. Favre was popular enough in his own state that if you uttered the name “Brett” in a public place, numerous young boys would all turn their heads simultaneously.
With that exceptionally lengthy backdrop set, let’s go through what Mike McCarthy did during his tenure in Green Bay from 2006-2018:
Photo by Tim Kamke/Getty Images
POSITIVES:
The positives are immense. It didn’t take long before McCarthy’s no-nonsense approach quickly resonated with the Packers fanbase and media. Like Pittsburgh, the brand is not the brand. The brand is winning football games. The Packers attempt to win championships like those that came before them, and the idea is to do so with a muddy jersey on a grass field under the sky or in the snow with a brand of gritty football suitable for NFL Films slow motion. McCarthy embraced that and understood it. It wasn’t necessarily power football as much as it was gutty football. They would enjoy street fights and welcome physical challenges while, of course, airing it out with Favre. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the revival of Favre’s career, which appeared dead and gone. The surprising final chapter of Favre in 2007-2009 with the Packers, Jets and Vikings in three consecutive seasons of winning football was unlikely to happen without McCarthy reaching him and getting him to return to efficient QB play, resisting the urge to always double down. Favre did not return to a Super Bowl but reached the NFC Championship Game in 2007 and 2009 with superb seasons. A coin-flip to go to the Super Bowl at ages 38 and 40 was unheard of at the time, and McCarthy had plenty to do with that.
Over the decade from 2007-2016, Packers offenses were outstanding. Favre would leave after 2007 with tremendous acrimony, and from there a whole new and nearly unprecedented soap opera would surface between the quarterback and his former team. McCarthy had very little to do with creating this mess; the QB he inherited was ready to take over the franchise. But he had to deal with it. And he did so quite well while developing a young and unproven QB in one of the noisiest transitions ever. During that stretch, Green Bay had a top-10 scoring offense in seven of the 10 years and finished sixth in the NFL on average. In terms of yardage, they averaged 10th. This all while playing a predominantly passing-based offense outside in Northern Wisconsin. More importantly, they made the playoffs in nine of those ten years (a mark that was only tied by New England).
The revival of Favre and the development of Rodgers are the clearest reasons for his success in Green Bay, but there is so much more to his run of success there. He absolutely set the tone for the franchise through much of the decade with the ability to unite and inspire a football team contending with a lot of health issues and adversity. Like the Cowboys, the Packers are many different teams’ biggest rival. They are the biggest game on the schedule for pretty much every team in their division, and that can certainly wear down a team’s mentality and resolve, especially if they are an annual fixture in the playoffs. McCarthy seemed to soak in that opportunity to meet the challenges head-on.
Before we get into more specifics, let me give you one more item beyond the revival of Favre and the development of Rodgers that made that decade of excellence possible.
It was 2013. The Packers lost Rodgers in the first quarter of a Monday night game played on November 4th against the Bears. The QB’s shoulder hit the turf and his collarbone had been broken, a familiar sight for Cowboys fans. In 2010 and 2015, we saw Dallas lose seasons this way. In 2013, the entire Green Bay franchise sunk the same way and all hope was gone as they lost that night and went 0-4-1 in their next five games. They found themselves entering December 5-6-1 after a 5-2 start with a healthy Rodgers. Everyone quickly began saying that everything — from coach to teammates — was useless without the QB.
I might argue this is where a coach who can inspire a team he has built can make a difference — and the other part is getting anything from the QB position. The Packers frantically signed an unemployed Matt Flynn to replace Scott Tolzien and Seneca Wallace, who were completely ineffective. They were blown out on Thanksgiving and the season appeared over. Their next three games — Atlanta, at Dallas, Pittsburgh — would be huge struggles against teams with healthy QBs, but they would need to win those games to win a bad division that year. With Flynn finally playing, they beat Atlanta, went to Dallas and overcame a 26-3 halftime deficit to Tony Romo and won the thriller 38-37 in a must-win game for both teams. Flynn then had Ben Roethlisberger on the ropes and lost another unreal game 38-31 — but because the Bears stumbled themselves, the Packers would play a Week 17 play-in game for the divisional title in Chicago and Rodgers would return to save the day. Yes, Rodgers would get the credit for an amazing fourth-down TD to Randall Cobb that day in Chicago, but any close observers saw a coach and a backup QB keep the team alive until that last escape on the final day. It wouldn’t have mattered without the win in Dallas.
Whether it was Rodgers in 2013 or the Super Bowl year in 2010 when the team set a record for most players on injured reserve, McCarthy truly meant “next man up,” and the team won plenty of games despite a very poor health record of keeping their guys on the field. In this sport, you had better be able to withstand some availability adversity and still win. McCarthy often was able to pull that off.
STRATEGIC DECISIONS
Over his 13 seasons in Green Bay, McCarthy would certainly gain a label for being conservative. Part of it is warranted. But when it came to “going for it” on fourth down, especially in non-fourth-quarter situations, almost nobody would go for it more (Jason Garrett has certainly been just the opposite, as our previous studies would indicate). The Packers ranked fourth in most times they went for it, but only 26th in conversion rate. That actually suggests that despite poor results, McCarthy still saw the value in the gambles. On 4th-and-4+, they actually went for it the most times in the NFL during his tenure and converted with the ninth-best rate. So, in this regard, don’t call McCarthy conservative.
Here are the 4th-down-and-4+ attempts in situations before the fourth quarter from 2010-2018 (years in which Garrett and McCarthy were both at their posts) to show you the incredible differences in the way they approached these situations:
4th down and 4+ (1Q-3Q), 2010-2018
Rank Tm Plays▼ ToGo Yds 1st%
1 GB 24 6.3 10.3 50.00%
2 BUF 18 8.3 5.1 27.80%
3 PHI 18 6.8 5.8 27.80%
4 WAS 18 6.8 5.8 22.20%
5 CAR 16 6.3 8.7 50.00%
6 KAN 15 7.1 7.6 46.70%
7 BAL 15 9.8 10.1 33.30%
8 CLE 14 6.1 15.5 50.00%
9 HOU 14 6.6 7.4 21.40%
10 ATL 13 5.8 3.2 53.80%
11 JAX 13 6 14 38.50%
12 SFO 13 7.2 10.8 46.20%
13 NYG 12 7.4 3.1 25.00%
14 OAK 12 9.3 6.7 25.00%
15 CHI 11 6.4 7.3 54.50%
16 DEN 11 7.2 2.6 27.30%
17 MIA 11 7.4 2.3 9.10%
18 LAR 11 7.5 7 27.30%
19 SEA 11 7.9 -0.3 9.10%
20 CIN 10 9.9 8.5 50.00%
21 IND 10 7.6 10.5 40.00%
22 DET 10 8.3 14.2 30.00%
23 NOR 10 6.7 11.2 30.00%
24 TEN 10 8.8 10.8 30.00%
25 NWE 9 6.3 14.2 44.40%
26 TAM 9 6.8 10.3 44.40%
27 ARI 8 8.3 18 25.00%
28 DAL 8 7 15 37.50%
29 PIT 8 5.4 7.4 25.00%
30 NYJ 7 10.7 13.7 42.90%
31 LAC 7 13.6 18 57.10%
32 MIN 6 11.5 -6 0.00%
Over the exact same span of time, McCarthy would go for it 300 percent more often than Garrett. You can’t say they see the game the same way.
It isn’t often that the two teams that I follow most closely in the NFL overlap, but this is probably the most significant one in a long, long time (no disrespect to Randall Cobb intended). They have one of the most historic and intense rivalries in the entire sport, and given that I was born in Wisconsin and raised on Packers football only to eventually earn a job following the Cowboys for a living in 1998, I may be in a unique position.
I considered showing you the Xs and Os to demonstrate how things will be different than during Jason Garrett’s regime, but I think there will be plenty of time for that. I also considered looking at the hire from the perspective of how Stephen and Jerry Jones arrived at this decision, perhaps offering you a few freshly baked second guesses on which direction they should have gone.
Instead, I have come to the conclusion that the best way to handle this might be from the same perspective I will use to analyze draft prospects in the days and weeks to come. When I break down a prospect, I grab a stack of tapes and tell you everything I have learned about a guy; what I like, what my concerns are and how he fits with the Dallas Cowboys (if they pick him). Well, this one is pretty clear: The Cowboys have picked McCarthy, and I have watched this man’s every move since 2006. This profile will be significantly longer than that of a normal draft prospect, but that is because I am not relying on my normal 200 snaps to evaluate a prospect, but over 200 games — 204 in the regular season and 18 more in the post-season, including four NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl at AT&T Stadium. There is one human who has ever won a Super Bowl in North Texas, and the Cowboys have hired him as the ninth coach in franchise history. Let’s get to work!
MIKE MCCARTHY – HEAD COACH
Mike McCarthy is 56 years old and was born and raised in Pittsburgh. He played college football at the community college and NAIA level, attending Baker University in Kansas before staying in the area as a graduate assistant for two seasons at Fort Hays State, several hours to the west. He returned home to Pittsburgh in 1989 to begin as a graduate assistant at Pitt for three seasons, at which time he famously also worked in a tollbooth on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Nearly every single biographical piece you ever see of the coach will definitely not miss that item of trivia. It serves as proof that he was willing to do whatever it might take to make a living in football.
He was able to work on the staff of Marty Schottenheimer from 1993-1998, first as a quality-control man low on the staff willing to do anything to help (you perhaps have seen video of him catching passes from Joe Montana in 1993-1994), then doing well enough to be thrust into the job of QB coach from 1995-1998 in Kansas City, where the Chiefs featured post-Montana QBs in Steve Bono, Elvis Grbac and Rich Gannon. Schottenheimer’s reign and his ultra-conservative view of football had played out by 1998 and a 7-9 season eventually got him fired. McCarthy was looking for work.
He landed in Green Bay in 1999 in what will be best known as the forgotten year of head coach Ray Rhodes, but McCarthy became Brett Favre’s QB coach. He was part of a challenging and dramatic 8-8 season; Mike Holmgren had just left for Seattle, interested in “buying his own groceries.” Rhodes and his staff probably never got a fair chance, and the staff was fired after the team missed the playoffs for the first time in a very long time. McCarthy needed a job again, and this time he was on to New Orleans, where fellow Pittsburgher Jim Haslett was assembling a staff and needed an offensive coordinator. In five seasons as New Orleans’ OC, the Saints were always in the top half of the league in points scored. McCarthy was generally seen as a success due to his work with young QB Aaron Brooks, RB Deuce McAllister and WR Joe Horn.
By 2005, he would join Baltimore defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, who had just been named the new coach in San Francisco and would bring McCarthy to town to work with the No. 1 pick they would draft. The question was whether they would take hometown 49ers fan Aaron Rodgers with that pick or Utah QB Alex Smith. McCarthy preferred Smith, and the franchise agreed, paving the road for the irony of never really spending too much time on Smith but 13 seasons with Rodgers (who like other great athletes, has a memory like an elephant and perhaps never really forgot the perceived slight). Anyway, that year in San Francisco featured a lot of Tim Rattay and Ken Dorsey at QB. Predictably, it went poorly. The 4-12 record set the tone for the Mike Nolan run in San Francisco, but in no way affected the desire for Green Bay to hire him 14 years ago this week.
The Packers knew that McCarthy would be perfect for two jobs in Green Bay, and his 1999 season certainly prepared him for the incredibly unique challenge that is the Packers head coaching position. Job No. 1 was to revive the career of Brett Favre — as the legendary quarterback had fallen to the very bottom of the NFL in 2005. Job No. 2 would be to ultimately develop Rodgers when Favre’s career ended. Somehow, the three-time MVP had rediscovered the freelancing and turnover-prone ways of his early career, and it had only gotten worse under Mike Sherman. The lack of real weapons around him continued to cause issues and the rift between QB and coach widened when GM Ted Thompson passed on the opportunity to sign, trade or draft help for Favre. Instead, he drafted his replacement.
That’s certainly not the best environment to start your career as a head coach, as there was drama and tension around each corner. McCarthy would have to figure out how a terribly unique job — perhaps the only one of its kind where there is no owner at all — would work with arguably the most powerful player in sports under your charge. Favre was popular enough in his own state that if you uttered the name “Brett” in a public place, numerous young boys would all turn their heads simultaneously.
With that exceptionally lengthy backdrop set, let’s go through what Mike McCarthy did during his tenure in Green Bay from 2006-2018:
Photo by Tim Kamke/Getty Images
POSITIVES:
The positives are immense. It didn’t take long before McCarthy’s no-nonsense approach quickly resonated with the Packers fanbase and media. Like Pittsburgh, the brand is not the brand. The brand is winning football games. The Packers attempt to win championships like those that came before them, and the idea is to do so with a muddy jersey on a grass field under the sky or in the snow with a brand of gritty football suitable for NFL Films slow motion. McCarthy embraced that and understood it. It wasn’t necessarily power football as much as it was gutty football. They would enjoy street fights and welcome physical challenges while, of course, airing it out with Favre. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the revival of Favre’s career, which appeared dead and gone. The surprising final chapter of Favre in 2007-2009 with the Packers, Jets and Vikings in three consecutive seasons of winning football was unlikely to happen without McCarthy reaching him and getting him to return to efficient QB play, resisting the urge to always double down. Favre did not return to a Super Bowl but reached the NFC Championship Game in 2007 and 2009 with superb seasons. A coin-flip to go to the Super Bowl at ages 38 and 40 was unheard of at the time, and McCarthy had plenty to do with that.
Over the decade from 2007-2016, Packers offenses were outstanding. Favre would leave after 2007 with tremendous acrimony, and from there a whole new and nearly unprecedented soap opera would surface between the quarterback and his former team. McCarthy had very little to do with creating this mess; the QB he inherited was ready to take over the franchise. But he had to deal with it. And he did so quite well while developing a young and unproven QB in one of the noisiest transitions ever. During that stretch, Green Bay had a top-10 scoring offense in seven of the 10 years and finished sixth in the NFL on average. In terms of yardage, they averaged 10th. This all while playing a predominantly passing-based offense outside in Northern Wisconsin. More importantly, they made the playoffs in nine of those ten years (a mark that was only tied by New England).
The revival of Favre and the development of Rodgers are the clearest reasons for his success in Green Bay, but there is so much more to his run of success there. He absolutely set the tone for the franchise through much of the decade with the ability to unite and inspire a football team contending with a lot of health issues and adversity. Like the Cowboys, the Packers are many different teams’ biggest rival. They are the biggest game on the schedule for pretty much every team in their division, and that can certainly wear down a team’s mentality and resolve, especially if they are an annual fixture in the playoffs. McCarthy seemed to soak in that opportunity to meet the challenges head-on.
Before we get into more specifics, let me give you one more item beyond the revival of Favre and the development of Rodgers that made that decade of excellence possible.
It was 2013. The Packers lost Rodgers in the first quarter of a Monday night game played on November 4th against the Bears. The QB’s shoulder hit the turf and his collarbone had been broken, a familiar sight for Cowboys fans. In 2010 and 2015, we saw Dallas lose seasons this way. In 2013, the entire Green Bay franchise sunk the same way and all hope was gone as they lost that night and went 0-4-1 in their next five games. They found themselves entering December 5-6-1 after a 5-2 start with a healthy Rodgers. Everyone quickly began saying that everything — from coach to teammates — was useless without the QB.
I might argue this is where a coach who can inspire a team he has built can make a difference — and the other part is getting anything from the QB position. The Packers frantically signed an unemployed Matt Flynn to replace Scott Tolzien and Seneca Wallace, who were completely ineffective. They were blown out on Thanksgiving and the season appeared over. Their next three games — Atlanta, at Dallas, Pittsburgh — would be huge struggles against teams with healthy QBs, but they would need to win those games to win a bad division that year. With Flynn finally playing, they beat Atlanta, went to Dallas and overcame a 26-3 halftime deficit to Tony Romo and won the thriller 38-37 in a must-win game for both teams. Flynn then had Ben Roethlisberger on the ropes and lost another unreal game 38-31 — but because the Bears stumbled themselves, the Packers would play a Week 17 play-in game for the divisional title in Chicago and Rodgers would return to save the day. Yes, Rodgers would get the credit for an amazing fourth-down TD to Randall Cobb that day in Chicago, but any close observers saw a coach and a backup QB keep the team alive until that last escape on the final day. It wouldn’t have mattered without the win in Dallas.
Whether it was Rodgers in 2013 or the Super Bowl year in 2010 when the team set a record for most players on injured reserve, McCarthy truly meant “next man up,” and the team won plenty of games despite a very poor health record of keeping their guys on the field. In this sport, you had better be able to withstand some availability adversity and still win. McCarthy often was able to pull that off.
STRATEGIC DECISIONS
Over his 13 seasons in Green Bay, McCarthy would certainly gain a label for being conservative. Part of it is warranted. But when it came to “going for it” on fourth down, especially in non-fourth-quarter situations, almost nobody would go for it more (Jason Garrett has certainly been just the opposite, as our previous studies would indicate). The Packers ranked fourth in most times they went for it, but only 26th in conversion rate. That actually suggests that despite poor results, McCarthy still saw the value in the gambles. On 4th-and-4+, they actually went for it the most times in the NFL during his tenure and converted with the ninth-best rate. So, in this regard, don’t call McCarthy conservative.
Here are the 4th-down-and-4+ attempts in situations before the fourth quarter from 2010-2018 (years in which Garrett and McCarthy were both at their posts) to show you the incredible differences in the way they approached these situations:
4th down and 4+ (1Q-3Q), 2010-2018
Rank Tm Plays▼ ToGo Yds 1st%
1 GB 24 6.3 10.3 50.00%
2 BUF 18 8.3 5.1 27.80%
3 PHI 18 6.8 5.8 27.80%
4 WAS 18 6.8 5.8 22.20%
5 CAR 16 6.3 8.7 50.00%
6 KAN 15 7.1 7.6 46.70%
7 BAL 15 9.8 10.1 33.30%
8 CLE 14 6.1 15.5 50.00%
9 HOU 14 6.6 7.4 21.40%
10 ATL 13 5.8 3.2 53.80%
11 JAX 13 6 14 38.50%
12 SFO 13 7.2 10.8 46.20%
13 NYG 12 7.4 3.1 25.00%
14 OAK 12 9.3 6.7 25.00%
15 CHI 11 6.4 7.3 54.50%
16 DEN 11 7.2 2.6 27.30%
17 MIA 11 7.4 2.3 9.10%
18 LAR 11 7.5 7 27.30%
19 SEA 11 7.9 -0.3 9.10%
20 CIN 10 9.9 8.5 50.00%
21 IND 10 7.6 10.5 40.00%
22 DET 10 8.3 14.2 30.00%
23 NOR 10 6.7 11.2 30.00%
24 TEN 10 8.8 10.8 30.00%
25 NWE 9 6.3 14.2 44.40%
26 TAM 9 6.8 10.3 44.40%
27 ARI 8 8.3 18 25.00%
28 DAL 8 7 15 37.50%
29 PIT 8 5.4 7.4 25.00%
30 NYJ 7 10.7 13.7 42.90%
31 LAC 7 13.6 18 57.10%
32 MIN 6 11.5 -6 0.00%
Over the exact same span of time, McCarthy would go for it 300 percent more often than Garrett. You can’t say they see the game the same way.
