Mike McCarthy spent nearly 13 full seasons as the Packers head coach, but that run came to an end after a demoralizing home loss to the Arizona Cardinals last season.
McCarthy was fired with four games remaining in the season, and he had remained mostly quiet about his former team in the months since. That changed this week.
McCarthy spoke to ESPN in detail about his Packers firing. He said that he was “stunned” when team president Mark Murphy called him into his office to let him know the Packers were making a change at that time. He thought a change would come after the season if the Packers missed the playoffs, but he did not see the move coming at all in December.
According to McCarthy, the team could not have handled the situation worse. He said via ESPN:
“It couldn’t have been handled any worse. Anytime you lose a close game, it’s a difficult time emotionally afterward, but when you lose a home game at Lambeau Field in December, it’s really hard. And that hasn’t happened very often. I walked out of my press conference, and I’m thinking about the game, thinking about how our playoff shot was now minimal. That’s where my head was at. And when I was told Mark Murphy wanted to see me — and the messenger was cold and the energy was bad. Mark said it was an ugly loss, and it was time to make change. He said something about the offense and the special teams, and he didn’t think it was going to get any better. There was no emotion to it. That was hard.”
McCarthy went on to say Murphy ignored the human component of letting someone go, and that still bothered him.
“Every time I released an individual, you get your words right. There’s a personal component to it. You know he has a family. He’s family. There wasn’t any of that. So that was off. The way people leave that building was very important to me. That’s a part of the business,” McCarthy said. “Hopefully moving forward for guys like Clay [Matthews] and Randall [Cobb] and Nick Perry and Jordy Nelson and T.J. Lang, it’s important for them to leave the right way. That way represents the Green Bay Packers standard that I tried to uphold every day.”
The former Packers coach said he has spent the time reflecting on what happened in Green Bay. He did add that the support he received from across the league helped him get through the shock of being fired. He noted that when he won the Super Bowl, he woke up to 200 text messages. After getting fired, it was more than 500. He appreciated that.
