On the Friday before a crucial NFC showdown with the Cowboys, Packers coach Mike McCarthy didn’t talk about about his injured players or his dangerous opponent for very long.
After getting the football talk out of the way, McCarthy spoke at length about the firing of Packers maintenance employee Mike Wood, repeating his previous claim that he didn’t fire Wood.
“I’m not involved in that decision and frankly I had zero intention, zero conversation and zero conversation, intention or anything to do with that.,” McCarthy said. (Full transcript here.)
McCarthy, however, did ask for Wood’s name from a superior -- fields manager Allen Johnson -- after the original incident happened. The Packers coach was asked if the comment was “Don’t lay an egg.”
“I was hoping you guys weren’t going to go this far with this,” McCarthy said. “I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t really know the man. He made a comment to me, I made a comment to him, it’s not the worst thing that’s been said, but I would not say it to a fellow employee. So that’s as far as I want to go with it.”
The minute McCarthy went to the trouble of asking about Wood, he had to have known there would be repercussions. McCarthy didn’t appear to have any interest in getting Wood his job back.
Wood claims that he gave McCarthy words of encouragement, but was told when fired that McCarthy heard him say, “Don’t lay an egg.” While McCarthy wouldn’t reveal what exactly he heard, we have to believe that “Don’t lay an egg” is a PG version of something more offensive. Right?
Wood is sticking by his original story.
“I love the Packers,” said Wood Friday. “I love coach. But this has been the day from hell. . . . “I wish Coach McCarthy the best. But Mike McCarthy is the head coach. People will believe him before they believe me.”
We’re not sure what to believe. But as Mike Florio mentioned earlier, the fans in Green Bay didn’t need another reason to pine for McCarthy’s ouster. Barring a run to the playoffs, they already would have been calling for a new coach. And in Green Bay, where there is no line between fan and shareholder, it matters more than most places how the public feels.
It’s far too early to tell whether Wood’s firing will be remembered as a symbolic moment of reckoning during McCarthy’s tenure, like Jim Mora’s radio comments in Atlanta that coaching the University of Washington was his “dream job.”
But the issue will only increase the building pressure on McCarthy’s Packers to win this week against Dallas. And the following week against San Francisco. And enough times after that to make the playoffs, and keep the angry mob (and media) in Green Bay from calling for McCarthy’s head.