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Packers may have trouble hiring top coaches

GREEN BAY — The Green Bay Packers look as bad right now as they have in almost 20 years, with a head coach fresh off a firing frenzy unprecedented in team history and some of his peers across the league wondering how in the world this could be happening in such a stable franchise.

Mike McCarthy’s decision to dump eight assistant coaches, including three of four coordinators, casts serious doubt on his ability to hire good coaches as well as the Packers’ ability to attract top-flight replacements.

Last week, team President Mark Murphy supported McCarthy’s moves, hoping fans would view it as a message that losing seasons wouldn’t be tolerated.

To me, McCarthy’s drastic actions were a sign of shocking desperation from a man who just one year before appeared headed for a long and successful tenure.

Is it the beginning of the end for McCarthy?

Possibly. He has four years left on a contract that pays him about $4 million per year, but the track record for sitting coaches after they’ve fired a bunch of assistants and Murphy’s aggressive stance aren’t suggestive of coaching longevity.

The Packers have the personnel to bounce back toward their 13-3 level of a year ago. They will play a much easier schedule. Injuries might not be as much of a factor.

But now the spotlight will be trained squarely on McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson, the man who hired him. And it means more pressure.

Canning eight coaches can be compared to painting an old fence. In time, the paint will wear away and the same problems will surface.

By and large, head coaches who fire people are looking for ways to escape the heat and beat the reaper themselves.

Unlike Mike Sherman, who was in the press auditorium the next morning to face the music after firing Ed Donatell and Jeff Jagodzinski in January 2004, McCarthy has hidden behind a wall of silence.

We also don’t know Thompson’s role in the firings, although the news release carried only McCarthy’s name. Sources believe McCarthy has had control of his own staff, which is the model Thompson experienced under Ron Wolf and Mike Holmgren.

The criticism here isn’t that McCarthy fired Bob Sanders and Mike Stock. Rather, it’s that he hired them in the first place.

Sanders should be praised for getting everything he possibly could out of himself over the last three years. His defenses performed right at the midpoint of the league, meaning he was better than half the defensive coordinators in the NFL. That shouldn’t be taken lightly.

But anyone who dealt with Sanders at any point in his career should have recognized his limitations. He was married to the old Cowboys scheme, his blitz package and ability to adjust were so-so and his personality just couldn’t inspire enough players.

Much the same could be said for the emotional, hard-working, intelligent Stock, although his special teams units had just one good year compared with two bad ones.

But after years of conversing with many of the top special-teams coaches, I have a feel for where Stock was ranked by his peers. The consensus was that Stock belonged in the middle of the pack.

Both men were tough, no-nonsense, committed and loyal coaches for McCarthy. Three years later, McCarthy concluded they weren’t good enough for him.

His decision to ax strength coach Rock Gullickson was strange. Together, they transformed the weight room and appeared to be close. Gullickson had his detractors in the locker room but he was good at his job and demanded accountability. One source said McCarthy hoped now to instill better harmony among the strength, training and medical departments.

The only possible reason for firing Robert Nunn was to clean the defensive slate and make it easier to attract a top coordinator. Nunn won’t be unemployed for long. His line cohort, the laid-back Carl Hairston, was an effective counterpoint to the hard-driving Nunn.

McCarthy made another mistake hiring Kurt Schottenheimer as secondary coach. Schottenheimer had value as a strategist but his pairing with Lionel Washington left the position without a coach willing to get up in the face of players.

McCarthy even felt compelled to can Ty Knott, the offensive quality-control coach and one of five coaches with whom he had previously worked.

Do you know how many coordinators Bill Belichick has fired in nine years in New England? None. He has quietly released half a dozen assistants.

Guess how many assistants Holmgren fired in his first 11 seasons as a head coach? None. When Holmgren was the 49ers’ offensive coordinator in 1990, he and George Seifert let go assistant Al Lavan. Years later, Holmgren told me he still felt sick about it.

One of Holmgren’s disciples, Andy Reid, hasn’t fired anyone in his decade in Philadelphia. Both of them believe that if they were going to uproot a coach’s family and the hire gave his all, they would take it as a personal challenge to coach the coach and, if his work wasn’t up to par, tutor him until it was.

Some coaches, such as Jim Mora Sr. in Indianapolis (2002), Wade Phillips in Buffalo (2001), Bobby Ross in San Diego (1997) and Marty Schottenheimer in Cleveland (1989), refused management’s demands to can coaches and walked the plank.

With head coaches’ salaries skyrocketing, the number of head coaches taking the moral high ground has diminished. Sadly, more and more assistants are becoming scapegoats, pawns in a profession overrun with hypocrites.

On Tuesday, McCarthy promoted Shawn Slocum even though the pool of proven special-teams coaches was larger than when he hired Stock. Slocum might turn out to be outstanding but his resume doesn’t compare to others’.

From every appearance, McCarthy tried to hire either Mike Nolan or the distinguished Gregg Williams as his next defensive coordinator. He also interviewed Bill Johnson, a highly regarded defensive line coach. But now all three have accepted other jobs.

Several coaches said they’d be leery of McCarthy now because if he fired a bunch of guys once he’d surely do it again. That’s the terrible reputation Jack Del Rio has earned in Jacksonville.

When McCarthy fills all his vacancies, there will be happy talk all around. But the bloom is off now. Nobody fires eight coaches without the next finger being pointed at him.