McCarthy Passes Play Calling Baton, Announces New Staff

February 12, 2015

Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy made it official today.

The much-rumored passing of the play calling baton has come to fruition. The Packers announced that, along with their complete coaching staff for 2015 on Thursday.

McCarthy has promoted offensive coordinator Tom Clements to associate head coach/offense and handed him the keys to a Porsche. Clements will handle the play-calling duties moving forward. The Packers also promoted receivers coach Edgar Bennett to offensive coordinator.

McCarthy made it clear that the move was made so that he could focus more on the bigger picture.

“I have a lot more to offer, the assistants, the staff. There’s a vision you give to your team and I will be more directly involved in defense schemes. And I will spend a lot of time with special teams. It’s an area of concern. We have to develop our young players and we need to get more out of our veterans,” McCarthy said.

With Bennett moving to offensive coordinator, it created the need for a new receivers coach. Quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt is taking on the added responsibility of that role.

As expected, assistant special teams coach Ron Zook was named special teams coach, replacing the dispatched Shawn Slocum. Jason Simmons moves into the assistant special teams coach role.

Finally, the two most recent hires now have titles, as well.

Jerry Montgomery, who was the defensive line coach at Oklahoma, will serve as a defensive front assistant. Former 49ers offensive line coach Mike Solari will serve as assistant offensive line coach.

UncleGravySword February 12, 2015

Man, good for Edgar Bennett. I’ve always rooted for that guy.

the real russ letlow February 12, 2015

good offense + good QB = Porshe; GB offense + Aaron Rodgers = Lamborghini

Cheese February 12, 2015

Lambeau-ghini
1. the real russ letlow February 13, 2015
  
  indeed!

jtmax February 12, 2015

Hope Clements is better than MM in the 4th quarter. That’s where our playcalling sucked.

icebowl February 12, 2015

The king is dead, God save the king….

MMTTDCSUCK February 12, 2015

McGlurpy did the right thing. Now hopefully Clements will not shit the bed in the fourth quarter with lousy “packages” and “required amounts of running plays” that MM seemed more apt to do, rather than become creative and counter the oppositions defensive packages and adjustments after halftime . . .

rebelgb February 12, 2015

Love these changes. Good on Mike for admitting we needed a bit of a shakeup.

Cheese February 12, 2015

This whole situation reminds me of an article on this site previously that stated that McCarthy was not a head coach, but just an offensive coordinator based on his lack of involvement with the rest of the team. I agreed with the points made and am glad to see that he is making changes to fix that. Unfortunately it had to happen after that ugly NFC championship game.

Here’s that article:
https://totalpackers.com/2014/08/27/mike-mccarthy-just-offensive-coordinator/

icebowl February 13, 2015

Talking heads discussed the shakeup this morning on Nfl network.
When debating whether this would propel GB to Superbowl L, they focussed on need to improve defense to get there….

Maybe a “Thug Named” SUH is the answer, apologies to Mr. Cash.