Packers coach Mike McCarthy met the media after watching his team go from holding 16-0 and 19-7 leads to losing 28-22 in overtime and he faced questions about his play calling during the scrum.
McCarthy’s calls to kick field goals on two fourth-and-1’s in the first quarter and the team’s cautious offensive approach while they were ahead in the second half were both up for debate. On the field goals, McCarthy said he “frankly” would have liked to have gone for it but “just felt that you had to take points” after what he saw from his offense on second and third down. In general, McCarthy wasn’t rethinking his calls.
“If you want to question my play calling … I’m not questioning it,” McCarthy said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I came in here to run the ball. The one statistic I had has as far as a target to hit was 20 rushing attempts in the second half, I thought that would be a very important target to hit for our offense.”
The most critical series of the game for the offense came after Morgan Burnett intercepted Russell Wilson with five minutes left to play. A first down wouldn’t have iced the game, but it would have raised the probability of a Green Bay win significantly. Three Eddie Lacy runs failed to get 10 yards (the second straight three-and-out for the Green Bay offense), though, and the Packers punted the ball away.
That’s when the Seahawks offense finally caught fire and a game the Packers had firmly in hand slipped through their fingers. McCarthy called it a “hard one to swallow,” something that feels like an understatement given how wrong things wound up going for his team.