The Walrus! Former Green Bay Packers coach Mike Holmgren appeared on Seattle’s KJR 950 AM yesterday with current Packers coach Mike McCarthy.
As you might expect, the conversation eventually turned to the infamous Fail Mary. That prompted this exchange between the coaches.
Said Holmgren: “There’s not a question in my mind that was as an interception … The thing is, when I watched your press conference the next day, and Mike you’re a real gentleman, I would have been fined. There’s no question in my mind, I would have been fined. And you handled that about as well as I’ve seen a coach handle that. Was that difficult?”
Said McCarthy: “Thanks. No question that was difficult, but it was the best thing for our football team, and I never lost sight of that. That was my vision of what I needed to do when I walked into the post-game press conference, and I think it was very apparent what happened. There’s good calls in our league and not-so-good calls, and not-so-good calls sometimes go the other way. … You knew there was going to be a storm that was going to follow that situation, and I was just trying to get our football team to move on as quickly as possible.”
This also kind of sums up why we are indifferent about McCarthy.
We were, of course, livid after that highway robbery. Had The Walrus been the coach of the Packers and that happened, well, like he said. We can just see him visibly fuming at the podium.
Instead, we got nothing from the organization. McCarthy is probably right that the team needed to move on quickly, but it was disappointing to see zero sense of outrage from anyone in the organization.
Nothing from McCarthy. Nothing from Ted Thompson. Nothing from Mark Murphy.
The Packers handled it with class. The Packers way and all that. We get it.
After the incident, I asked Ron Wolf why he thought these guys hadn’t said anything and how he would have handled it. He told me he preferred not to say, which tells me that he probably would have been as publicly outraged as everyone outside of the organization was. As outraged as Holmgren would have been.
Obviously, and unfortunately in our eyes, some of the edge the Packers had disappeared with those two guys.