After watching his team lose Sunday for the third straight time, Packers coach Mike McCarthy felt the need to defend his track record in Green Bay.
McCarthy's coaching skills have come into question over the past few weeks after losses to the Falcons, Colts and Titans. They Packers have now lost four of their past five and are just 8-11 in their last 19 regular-season games.
Please just ignore those facts, though, because McCarthy would like you to know that he's still good at what he does.
"Let's just state the facts: I'm a highly successful NFL head coach," McCarthy said on Monday, via ESPN.com.
The Packers coach is apparently taking the glass half-full view of Green Bay's 4-5 start. McCarthy says every team is going to hit rough patches in every NFL season.
"I've never looked at the ride to this point as smooth or whatever the words you used," McCarthy said. "To me, it's always bumpy, and to me that's the joy of it. That's this game. That's how hard it is in the NFL. Really, what you did last year or 2010, as we know, doesn't factor."
The upside for McCarthy is that everyone in the NFC North has been as bad as the Packers. The Vikings have lost four in a row after starting 5-0, and the Lions are 5-4 after hitting their own bump in the road -- in the form of a three-game losing streak -- earlier this season.
One thing McCarthy doesn't plan on doing, no matter how bad things get in Green Bay, is blowing things up and starting over.
"I'm not into shock and awe, or [a] torch the landscape-type person," McCarthy said. "I'm a builder. I'm a developer. I've said that since the first day I arrived here. You build a program, culture is what makes it go, you have to invest in that culture every single day, and that's my big-picture focus."
Of course, he might want to think about doing that on offense because Green Bay has given up an average of 30.2 points per game this season. That's something that no other Packers team has done in the Super Bowl-era. It's hard to win in the NFL when your opponent is scoring more than 30 points every week, something that Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is well aware.
Rodgers, who sounds just as frustrated as McCarthy, doesn't seem to have the same view on things as his coach. The Packers quarterback seemed to imply the Packers should blow things up if that's what will get guys to play hard.
"There has to be that healthy fear as a player that if you don't do your job they'll get rid of you," Rodgers said after Green Bay's 47-25 loss to Tennessee, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Rodgers didn't just call out his teammates, he also called out himself.
"I think we've all got to go back and the urgency's got to pick up, the focus has got to pick up ... we've all got to play better, and that starts with me."
The good news for the Packers is that the season is still salvageable. At 4-5, Green Bay is just one game out of first place in the NFC North. Plus, the Packers have one game against both Minnesota and Detroit still on the schedule.
