Thank You for Not Coaching

For whatever he offers as an offensive guru and a quarterback whisperer, Mike McCarthy is one of the worst in-game decision-makers in the league. It’s one thing to get fourth-and-1 decisions wrong, and McCarthy did in this game. But it was more than that. This is the same coach who ran a meaningless pre-halftime draw last year with Eddie Lacy, who promptly sprained his ankle. It’s the same McCarthy who threw his challenge flag on a fumble that would have been automatically reviewed. He kicks extra points to go down 12, uses his timeouts after the two-minute warning, and even that’s too much to ask sometimes.

None of those infractions is bad enough on its own to call McCarthy a bad tactician, but each are hints suggesting he leaves a lot to be desired. Sunday will go down as the proof that he’s hopelessly lost when it comes to game management. Blessed with a bevy of Seattle turnovers that yielded incredible field position, an effective running game, and Aaron freaking Rodgers, McCarthy managed to coach his way into 22 points and a heartbreaking defeat. Let’s review:

• McCarthy kicks an 18-yard field goal to open the scoring.
His original sin was unforgivable. After John Kuhn nearly punched the ball in on second down, Eddie Lacy was stuffed on third down, leaving the Packers with fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line. The numbers here are very clear, and every coach who gets this question wrong in his job interview should not be trusted to run an NFL team. McCarthy is costing his team 1.3 points by kicking a field goal here. Those points come in handy.

The arguments you’ll hear in response to the logic are almost all bunk. Yes, the Packers had been stuffed on the previous two plays. If a team throws two incomplete passes on first-and-10 and second-and-10, should it punt on third-and-10? Yes, Seattle has a great defense and it was going to be a low-scoring game. That just makes having seven points that much more valuable. Yes, the Packers were playing on the road. That doesn’t mean they should take the points; winning home teams from 2010 to 2014 did so while scoring an average of 29 points per game, while road winners scored … 28. You need the points either way. And for whatever argument that you need to come away with points after previously going into Seattle territory without scoring (you’re going to win 3-0?), the Packers did just that and lost.

• McCarthy kicks a 19-yard field goal to go up 6-0.
In fact, McCarthy loved taking the points so much that he did it twice! After Doug Baldwin fumbled away the ensuing kickoff, the Packers took over at the Seattle 23-yard line and promptly ran the ball three times for 17 yards, a move that apparently afforded McCarthy no proof that they might have been able to get 1 yard when they needed it. After a checkdown against a big Seattle blitz moved the ball to the 1.5-yard line, McCarthy again kicked a field goal, again costing his team 1.3 points. That’s 2.6 points, which is almost as much as a field goal, and if anybody knows how valuable field goals are, it’s Mike McCarthy.

• McCarthy runs the ball on third-and-3 just outside the red zone.
In context with the two previous decisions, this is just about indefensible. Yes, the defense isn’t lined up the same way on the 24-yard line that it would be from the 1-foot line. He still sent his team out in a full-house backfield and had it run the ball on third-and-3, almost surely to avoid the possibility of a turnover or a sack that would have pushed it out of field goal range. Remember: McCarthy’s quarterback is Aaron freaking Rodgers.

Lacy gained 2 yards. You’ll never guess what happened next …

• McCarthy kicks a field goal on fourth-and-1.
The New York Times‘s 4th Down Bot actually suggests this is the correct call, noting that a field goal try improves Green Bay’s win expectancy from 90 percent to 92 percent. That’s fine. I still want to understand how third-and-3 from the 24-yard line is a good time to run the ball while fourth-and-1 from the 22-yard line is not. Or, you know, you could put the ball in the hands of the guy who is going to win league MVP and trust him to get a yard.

• McCarthy gets conservative in the fourth quarter.
Green Bay took two crucial three-and-outs in the fourth quarter that left the door open for Seattle’s comeback. McCarthy’s conservative calls reportedly irked Rodgers, who — just for reference — is the best quarterback in football and threw the ball once on those two possessions.

The first was the more egregious of the two. Taking over on their own 13-yard line with 6:53 to go after a 57-yard drive that led to a field goal on their last possession, the Packers took over and got ultra-conservative. They ran twice with James Starks before calling for a hitch route to an isolated Andrew Quarless versus linebacker K.J. Wright on third-and-4, which fell incomplete under some pressure from Wright. It was the same play call that won Green Bay the game against Miami late in the fourth quarter, but that was versus abysmal coverage linebacker Philip Wheeler; Wright is one of the better linebackers in football.

The second drive was mostly circumstance. After the interception, the Packers ran the ball with Lacy for a loss of 4, at which point the Seahawks called timeout. I can understand wanting to run clock on the next play, which went for a loss of 2 and another timeout. At third-and-16 and with the clock stopped, a third running play seems reasonable enough.

What was bizarre, then, was McCarthy’s comment after the game that he was trying to hit a particular number. “The one statistic I had as far as a target to hit,” McCarthy said, “was 20 rushing attempts in the second half. I felt that would be a very important target to hit for our offense.”

I can’t fathom how coaches still say stuff like that in 2014. It’s been clear for 11 years now that teams run the ball a lot when they’re winning as opposed to winning when they run the ball. That’s even more true in the pass-happy days of 2014 and it goes even further when Aaron Rodgers is the person who plays quarterback for the team you coach. As Mike Tanier once noted, if teams that kneel at the end of games almost always do so in victory formation, why not just kneel to win?

None of the cases when McCarthy kicked field goals was particularly wonky or would have left him subject to serious derision if he had gone for it and failed. He wasn’t going for it on fourth-and-short on his side of the field or anything. He wasn’t alone in making mistakes in this game; while Pete Carroll pulled out a fake field goal6 in a desperate spot to get a touchdown and make it 16-6, he didn’t go for two points with about 20 minutes left in a move that would have made it a one-score game. Instead, when the Seahawks scored a touchdown later in the game, the score was 19-13 and they had no way of coming within a field goal, whereas they would have by attempting and converting the earlier two-pointer.

Instead, McCarthy made basic mistakes under anecdotal ideas that don’t hold up to scrutiny. In a playoff where the likes of Carroll, Bill Belichick, and Jason Garrett have been rewarded for their aggressive decisions, McCarthy played it safe and ended up inadvertently aiding his team’s trip out of the playoffs. McCarthy took the points and ended up getting taken.

If Brandon Bostick blocks on that onside kick like he was supposed to instead of trying to be a hero, Jordy Nelson recovers it and none of these things are being talked about today.

I also still want to know why he called TO on 4th down with 19 seconds left in the game to kick the eventual game-tying FG instead of letting the clock run down to 3 seconds or so.

Out of all the egregious mistakes, that's easily the biggest one, and it's not really close. Of all of the things the Seahawks needed to have go right in the final few minutes, recovering the onside kick was the one with the lowest probability, and the one they were only going to have only one shot at pulling off. If the Packers recover there, it's basically over. None of the defensive mistakes on the following two drives matter if Bostick doesn't decide to be a hero.

that's not really fair; it's a player making a judgement call in the moment. if he doesn't go for the ball, maybe a seahawk goes up and gets it. jordy was there, but not right there.