Mike McCarthy spent parts of 13 seasons coaching the Green Bay Packers, won a Super Bowl there and built one of the most consistent stretches in franchise history. On Wednesday, he reached back to his very first Packers team as the cautionary tale he still coaches from.
PennLive Steelers beat reporter Nick Farabaugh relayed from Pittsburgh’s training camp that McCarthy, now in his first year running the Steelers, believes he pushed his 2006 Green Bay team past the breaking point during his debut season as a head coach.
It’s perhaps for that very reason there will be no live tackling at Saint Vincent College this summer. McCarthy has watched his own teams get ground down by excessive work in the heat, and he traces the habit all the way back to Green Bay.
His own description of that first camp was blunt. McCarthy said he “ran the team into the ground” in 2006.
Two decades later, the Packers season that followed is still the receipt.
Mike McCarthy Says He Wore Down His First Packers Team In 2006
The circumstances made a punishing camp feel justified at the time. McCarthy was 42 years old, replacing Mike Sherman, and inheriting a roster coming off a 4-12 season. Brett Favre did not commit to returning until April 26. Charles Woodson signed the same day. A.J. Hawk arrived fifth overall. Camp ran at St. Norbert College in the two-a-day era, back when the practice calendar was governed by tradition rather than research.
Green Bay then opened the season 1-4.
The Packers sat at 4-8 through 12 games before winning their final four to finish 8-8, second in the NFC North and out of the playoffs for a second straight year. Donald Driver and Aaron Kampman made the Pro Bowl.
The splits are stranger still. As Packers.com has noted, that team went 5-3 on the road and 3-5 at Lambeau Field, making it one of only two Green Bay clubs since divisional play began to post a winning road record and still miss the postseason. The other came in 1968.
The late surge is what gives the admission its teeth. The 2006 roster was not short on talent or effort. It simply did not have legs until December, and by then the math was gone.
How The Lesson Reshaped Mike McCarthy’s Packers Training Camps
McCarthy did not sit on the theory. He overhauled his camp structure in Green Bay and, in a press conference transcript published by Packers.com back in 2007, explained the change by citing a five-year internal study conducted with the team’s trainers and doctors. It found hamstring and fatigue injuries occurring at nearly a two-to-one rate under the old schedule.
His summary of the philosophy has aged well. He said a team does not have to “lose your legs to gain toughness.”
What followed is the résumé Packers fans actually remember. McCarthy went 125-77-2 in Green Bay with six NFC North titles, nine playoff appearances, four NFC Championship Game trips and a Super Bowl XLV ring.
He has carried the same blueprint to Pittsburgh. McCarthy has scheduled morning practices, and the Steelers are one of four teams skipping joint sessions entirely this summer. It seems twenty years of evidence sit behind those decisions, and he is not pretending otherwise.
“I’ve crossed that line too many times,” McCarthy said.
Former Packers HC Mike McCarthy Admits He ‘Ran Team Into the Ground’