For weeks, my thought was that Mike McCarthy would depart the Green Bay Packers after 13 seasons in much the same way that Andy Reid left Philadelphia after 14 seasons.
Mark Murphy, the president of the Packers, would borrow a page from Eagles owner Jeff Lurie in January 2103, reminisce about their memorable run together and, if McCarthy was willing where Reid wasn’t, appear at a joint press conference to celebrate the past and toast the future.
McCarthy won the Super Bowl that Reid didn’t. McCarthy had a better overall record. His last team in Green Bay was better than Reid’s in Philly.
Most importantly, the firing would happen the day after the final game of the season had been played.
If Murphy was a man of class, that’s how it would have gone. Instead, he brought shame on the Packers and himself Sunday by firing McCarthy less than 30 minutes after Mason Crosby missed a field goal and the lowly Arizona Cardinals left Lambeau Field with an shocking victory.
What if Crosby makes that field goal and the Packers win in overtime? Murphy couldn’t have done it. The Packers would have remained in contention. He probably would have waited until the next loss, if in fact there would be a next loss.
Not long after McCarthy fulfilled his media responsibilities, he was at or near his auxiliary office on the first floor just down the wide corridor from the locker room. It was still less than 30 minutes after the game ended. His routine over the years had been to gear down after games inside with Ted Thompson, Ball and a select few from the organization.
McCarthy then was told by vice president Russ Ball to go upstairs because Murphy wanted to see him in his office. McCarthy went up, received the one piece of news in a brief exchange with Murphy that he hoped never to hear and that was that.
Let there be no misunderstanding. McCarthy was stunned. Coaching the Packers was his dream job. He wanted to finish what he started.
McCarthy told one friend that he felt that the organization simply had quit on him.
Any leader of substance would have slept on a decision of this magnitude after such an unexpected outcome. Based on point spreads, it had been the Packers’ worst defeat ever at Lambeau Field. In a word, the afternoon couldn’t have gone worse.
Assuming it would have been a different story had the Packers won Sunday, it’s reasonable to picture Murphy gathering up his topcoat in his executive suite seconds after the kick missed, grabbing Ball and in a moment of perhaps concealed anger telling him that he wanted to see McCarthy as soon as possible.
If Murphy still felt that way Monday morning, at least most of the emotion would have been gone and he could have canned McCarthy by sunrise if he wanted. Nothing would have been lost, and Murphy would have had more time to reflect on the gravity of his decision and unprecedented nature of his actions.
By unofficial check of the NFL record book, McCarthy had the most consecutive seasons (13) of any coach in history that was fired during a season. In 2001, the Vikings fired Dennis Green after the 15th game of his 10th season. Next at nine seasons were San Diego’s Don Coryell, fired nine games into 1986, and Jacksonville’s Jack Del Rio, fired 11 games into 2011.
For a Super Bowl-winning coach, it brought to mind October 1972 when Bob Irsay, the impetuous new owner of the Baltimore Colts, fired Don McCafferty after a 1-4 start (but 26-11-1 overall record) less than two years after he won Super Bowl V.
More than 100 coaches have been canned in-season but McCarthy, with a final record of 135-85-2 (.613), unofficially finished with a better winning percentage than all but two. The Giants’ LeRoy Andrews was 24-5-1 (.817) before being fired 15 games into the 17-game season of 1930. The Oilers’ Lou Rymkus was 12-7-1 (.625) before getting the boot five games into 1961.
Of the coaches with more victories than the 135 that place McCarthy 25th on the all-time winning list, Mike Shanahan and Jeff Fisher were the only ones to be fired mid-stream. Those unhappy events occurred with teams other than the one where they enjoyed their salad days.
Using the regular season only, McCarthy’s 125 victories were tied for 27th all-time. Of the 26 coaches ahead of him, McCarthy’s winning percentage of .618 ranks behind only nine: Bill Belichick (.682), George Halas (.682), Don Shula (.677), Paul Brown (.672), Tony Dungy (.668), Curly Lambeau (.631), Bill Cowher (.623), Joe Gibbs (.621) and Bud Grant (.621).
All of the above are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Belichick will be one day.
Why, you might ask, should it matter when a coach of McCarthy’s stature is fired?
Because McCarthy never quit on the Packers and Murphy, in turn, had no reason to quit on him.
The move was disrespectful and classless. As a championship coach, community benefactor and proud keeper of the Packers name, McCarthy deserved at the very least to be allowed to finish the season.
Jim Dooley. Abe Gibron. Jack Pardee. Neill Armstrong. Dave Wannstedt. Dick Jauron. Marc Trestman. John Fox.
Those are eight of the Chicago Bears’ 10 coaches since Halas, and not one finished with a winning record. But none of them was fired in a season because the Bears treated their employees with more dignity than Murphy treated McCarthy.
The Packers seldom, if ever, even discussed dumping Phil Bengtson, Dan Devine, Bart Starr, Forrest Gregg. Lindy Infante, Ray Rhodes or Mike Sherman before the end of their last season. For most of those years, Bob Harlan served as president. They coached through their final season.
Now because of Murphy, who replaced Harlan in late 2007, McCarthy will join the hopeless Gene Ronzani as the only coaches in club history to get pink-slipped during the season. It’s a pairing so ridiculous as to defy description.
Losing to Arizona was horrendous. Yet, for 11 games before that, the Packers were 4-6-1 and Murphy still was talking about a playoff run. That’s because the Packers weren’t a bad team.
Granted, their winning percentage was just .410, but as a road underdog they were in position to beat the Rams, Patriots, Seahawks and Vikings in the last six games but failed to finish. The Cardinals game wasn’t typical of the season at all.
Time after time, year after year, turnover differential reveals so much to determine when coaches have lost it.
From 1999-’10, the Eagles ranked third in the NFL at plus-59. Reid went minus-14 in 2011 and minus-24 in ’12.
Green was plus-53 in his first seven seasons and minus-37 in his last three.
Sherman lost his job in Green Bay after his turnover rates of minus-14 and minus-24 in 2004-’05 were the exact same as Reid’s in his last two seasons.
The statistic that sustained McCarthy’s career disappointed him toward the end. The Packers were minus-3 last year, dead even this year. Ranking just 18th in turnover differential didn’t please McCarthy, but at even certainly didn’t show any indication of a team that was being poorly coached.
The Packers rank 17th in scoring differential (minus-6), eighth in offense and 13th in defense.
All this blather from fans about McCarthy losing the locker room has no basis in reporting or observation.
Murphy and Brian Gutekunst, his top personnel aide, can say all they want about “not playing up to standards” and “it had run its course” and “change was needed now.”
I get all that, although four games often can change perceptions. But no change was needed with four games yet to play and a future Packer Hall of Fame coach dearly wanting to complete the season.
Murphy basically has functioned as a glorified PR guy in Green Bay, a franchise that had been rolling in dough and flowing with success as Thompson and McCarthy were making all the important decisions. And, in that role, he has exhibited an exceptional feel for his clientele.
If I could sense it, Murphy could ten-fold. The fan base, especially those under 40 that know nothing but winning, had turned on McCarthy and wasn’t going to come back.
As one personnel man said at mid-week, 95% of the fans don’t know what’s going on. There were 15,000 to 20,000 empty seats for Arizona and substantial booing, and those are things that Murphy would pay close attention.
For the life of me, the only advantage I can see for the Packers firing McCarthy when they did would be to lift some of the pressure off Murphy for the next month.
Murphy said the move would benefit the Packers by starting their search before teams that will fire their coach after the season. In truth, it really won’t.
The assumption is that Murphy will ask Jed Hughes to assist in the search. Since getting Murphy before the Packers board and subsequently hired in 2007, Hughes has been involved, at an estimated cost of $250,000, in almost every major hiring. Two of Murphy’s major vice-presidential additions, Laura Sankey in sales/marketing and later Tim Connolly in sales/marketing, were misses by Hughes that ended up being fired.
Last week, Murphy boasted of his knowledge of football and the league. A few years ago, he didn’t even know the name of a key front-office football executive in the NFC North. He has never scouted or coached. He didn’t become heavily involved in football until a year or two ago.
If Murphy knew the league, he wouldn’t need Hughes. All Hughes does is call people in the league asking them for their opinions. When Ron Wolf and Thompson were picking coaches, they didn’t need any head-hunter because they had expertise.
“A head-hunter is a way of covering your bases, like we left no stone unturned,” an executive in football said. “But if you really are a person of the league you kind of know who the guys are in the league that are substantial and college guys that would fit.”
Not only did Murphy rely on Hughes during the hiring of Gutekunst as general manager and assorted vice presidents, he had Hughes interviewing candidates and offering recommendations to be the next GM. It should be noted that Hughes was fired as linebackers coach by Michigan’s Bo Schembechler after the 1975 season and as linebackers coach by Pittsburgh’s Chuck Noll in early 1989.
Hughes and the Packers are barred from talking to NFL coaches until various times after the season but undoubtedly they’re already talking to their agents. Perhaps they could line up the first interview with some candidates, but that’s not vital. Besides, that type of clandestine work could have been done if McCarthy was still on the job.
Murphy also spoke of the benefits an early out might mean for McCarthy. Let’s be real. He doesn’t care about McCarthy, who can be expected to stick it to Murphy and the Packers every chance he gets in his next assignment. What Murphy does care about is that McCarthy doesn’t sit out 2019 and collect the approximately $9 million the club owes him.
An audition for Joe Philbin? In a way it is, but the Packers already should know all about him as an assistant coach, offensive coordinator and head coach in Miami.
Murphy told us he has hired a lot of coaches. Fine, but most of those were for minor sports at Colgate and Northwestern.
Of course, Murphy would be out of the limelight now if he had picked up the phone and brought John Dorsey on board in the fall of 2017. Dorsey, however, wouldn’t have tolerated the reduced role that Gutekunst accepted from Murphy.
By never contacting Dorsey, Murphy made it abundantly clear he was breaking from the Harlan-Wolf legacy that had made the Packers big winners for a quarter century and was going to run the show his way.
By firing McCarthy, Murphy created tension among the 22 assistant coaches. All of them are thinking ahead to their next job now, and some probably have spent extensive time on the phone networking just as they try to calm nervous wives and children.
Try as the Packers have tried to spin it, many players would be royally ticked and the good ones could be just hoping to avoid injury in the next four Sundays. McCarthy always has been popular among players. He never threw anyone under the bus, took care of players’ bodies and ran a highly professional operation.
There are reasons why interim coaches traditionally have the poor records that they do.
Besides dealing with a 35-year-old quarterback that has been acting like a prima donna, attractive candidates on the Packers’ list will have to decide if they want to work directly for someone like Murphy. If he fired a long-time winning coach like McCarthy in his 13th year, they will have to ask themselves what would happen to them if the thin-looking roster isn’t improved quickly and they get off to a rocky start themselves.
Murphy bet that public opinion would support the firing, and by and large it has. With head-coaching salaries almost comparable to some CEOs, everyone just seems to accept pink slips for a downturn in performance almost regardless of past achievement.
When the Packers permitted McCarthy to address his staff and then his players Wednesday, Philbin said it was an example of the Packers being “a first-class organization all the way around.”
What the premature firing of Mike McCarthy by Mark Murphy really represented was another dark day for an organization in the midst of a sharp decline.
the bed the last 4 or more years. The whole org was lulled into accepting the status quo. That isn't going to fly anymore. Will a new coach and shake up pay dividends right away? Who knows, but doing the same samething and just hoping something works sure as hell won't.
