GREEN BAY PACKERS HEAD COACH MIKE MCCARTHY - Ingles

Press Conference
Monday, Feb. 7

(Has it sunk in yet that you’re taking that trophy home? How did you spend the evening?)
It was a fun night. I can’t put into words the experience post-game in the locker room. But we had a party back at the hotel. We’re a community-owned football team, so you can see all the fingerprints on our trophy. It was passed around. Everybody had a lot of fun with it. Spent a lot of time with family throughout the evening. I’m sure it will sink in when we get off that plane in Green Bay.

(You made a lot of bold coaching moves over the last couple months. Giving pre-game to the captains. The ring thing. What went into that whole confidence thing from your perspective?)
I talked to our football team a lot about having real confidence, and those are just examples and opportunities to express that. I felt that the measurement of the rings, the timing of it would be special, it would have a significant effect on our players doing it the night before the game. Letting the captains speak to the football team before we go out in pre-game, frankly was really an opportunity to try to develop leadership. I wanted to look for ways for Aaron Rodgers to continue, for his leadership to develop and grow, and it has tremendously this year. Same with Charles Woodson. So it’s just all about staying focused on the program. It’s an excellent football team that we feel is going to continue to grow and get better, and it was just a thought of trying to develop leadership. Ego, everybody has an ego, but you have to discipline your ego and look for those types of opportunities, even coaches too. We have assistant coaches that talk before practice on Friday, and it’s an opportunity for them to grow and express themselves and give a good message, because it’s about the team, it’s about growth, it’s about development, and that’s something we did a very good job of as a football team, particularly through the injury phase that we went through.

(What factors contributed to your game plan of throwing from beginning to end? Was there something about Pittsburgh that made that the best way to attack them?)
Well, a huge part of our game plan was really putting the ball in Aaron Rodgers’ hands. He did a great job at the line of scrimmage. A majority of our plays were run and pass options. We were really feeding off of how they were going to play our personnel groups, and Aaron’s discipline, ability to throw the ball away when it wasn’t there, didn’t take any chances, just gave me the ability to be aggressive as a play-caller. But it was a game plan that we were going to put the ball in Aaron’s hands, put it on his shoulders, and we knew he would produce.

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