Mike McCarthy: Looking in the mirror, tackling, and Eddie Lacy

Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy didn’t pull any punches yesterday when he met with the press to discuss the status of his team the day after being run over by the world champion Seattle Seahawks.

He was quick to say that the coaching staff had watched the film from the night before and wasn’t very happy with what they saw. But more importantly, McCarthy pulled out the mirror and looked deeply into it, blaming himself and the coaching staff for not being prepared for what they ran into.

“We were not sharp. I think our players were unsettled and we never got into the flow we needed to.”

“We were not sharp. I think our players were unsettled and we never got into the flow we needed to,” McCarthy said. “We were trying to be in the perfect call instead of giving our guys clean calls.”

Because the calls from the sidelines weren’t “clean,” the play on the field was inconsistent at best.

Those are correctable things, according to McCarthy – something they will spend the next 10 days on cleaning up for the home opener against the New York Jets.

But probably most disturbing and most noticeable in Thursday night’s loss was the lack of tackling – something that has plagued the Packers in the past under defensive coordinator Dom Capers.

Seattle Seahawks tight end

breaks up the interception by Green Bay Packers inside linebacker

. Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports photograph

But McCarthy said that is also something that is correctable.

“We had way too many missed tackles,” McCarthy said. “It’s a fundamental we practice every day and it did not carry over to the field. After one game, we’ve put out our performance and our opponent will stress us in areas we did not perform well.”

And the area where they didn’t perform at all was in tackling. McCarthy said that when players don’t utilize the correct footwork, it compromises their ability to utilize the fundamentals of tackling. After all, that is what football is, right? Vince Lombardi would tell us all today that the game comes down to two things – blocking and tackling.

The Packers didn’t do either very well, or at least as well as they needed to win Thursday night.

Missed tackles were left all across the Packers’ defense, but it was linebacker Brad Jones who has caught the brunt of the “bad tackling” mantra that has been shouted across Packers Nation over the past couple of days.

Jones missed three tackles on the night, made a measly three tackles and had a sure interception knocked from his hands in the first quarter.

Fans have castigated him for those indiscretions and even McCarthy said that he didn’t play very well.

But will Jones lose his job over it? That remains to be seen as Jamari Lattimore stands at the ready. Maybe we will see more Lattimore against the Jets.

And on one final note, we have to consider Eddie Lacy. The star running back was hit hard in the fourth quarter by Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor, played one more down and then reportedly came off the field feeling woozy – a sure sign of a concussion.

After the game it was confirmed that Lacy was concussed, but the level of the concussion wasn’t deemed highly serious.

In fact, McCarthy was upbeat about Lacy during his press conference Friday.

Stating that Lacy had already passed the initial step of the concussion protocol, he felt confident that Lacy was on the right track to recovery. Whether Lacy will be ready to play against the Jets next Sunday remains to be seen, but the initial reports seem good.