After the Packers hired Matt LaFleur as their new head coach in January, team CEO Mark Murphy said that a group of players on the team complained that “a complacency had set in” while Mike McCarthy was still coaching the team.
Murphy also said that players wanted a coach who would hold people accountable, which echoed comments that left tackle David Bakhtiari made about a change he wanted to see with the team.
The former Packers coach responded to both of those comments in an interview with Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com and he took issue with the characterization of how he ran the team.
“When you throw out words like complacency and accountability, that bothered me,” McCarthy said. “That’s not accurate. I’ll be first to say that coaches are in the business of being criticized. We deal with it on a daily basis. But when you throw out a statement like that, you better have it right. A big part of the success I’ve had in this league is due to a tireless work ethic. All coaches work hard, but the accountability comment was totally inaccurate. I held my coaches and players accountable every year. Our internal fine process would support that. All I know is I did my job every day and was accountable to winning in line with the standards and the values of the Green Bay Packers that were established by the likes of Ted Thompson and clearly Bob Harlan a long time ago.”
While McCarthy may have issues with the way Murphy framed the decision and may be unhappy with the way it was handled, he added that it is “clear to me now that both sides needed a change” and that suggests everyone in the Packers may have been overly settled into a way of doing business that was no longer bringing the desired results.