McCarthy: House won't practice Thursday
Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy spoke to the media following practice on Wednesday, as his team prepared for Sunday's road game against the Buffalo Bills. Here are some highlights:
Injury report
Did not participate: ILB Jamari Lattimore (ankle), G Josh Sitton (toe), CB Davon House (shoulder)
Limited: RB Eddie Lacy (hip), G T.J. Lang (ankle)
Full: OLB Nick Perry (shoulder)
On House:
Davon hurt his shoulder. We're still looking at it. I do not see him being available tomorrow during practice.
On Bills quarterback Kyle Orton:
Excellent addition. Ten years in the league, I always thought he's been very productive. He played very well against us in Kansas City in 2011. He has complete understanding of the offense, complete all the throws. He does a very good job with their offense. … He's played a lot of football.
On House's current and past shoulder injuries:
It doesn't have anything to do with past injury.
On protecting the football:
The Buffalo Bills do a great job defensively in their coverage units. They're No. 2 in the league in takeaways. It's a tough environment. We have three players on our team who played against Buffalo eight years ago. It's a fast track, old-style stadium. Those are things we're focused on.
On a loud crowd:
It challenges you. Anytime you have communication challenges, you have to overcome it. It's one of the louder places we'll play this year.
On the Bills' red-zone defense:
You look at their defense, it starts up front. They can get a lot of pressure with a four-man rush. They're playing very well.
On tapering at the end of the season:
You have to be very conscious of your workload. The schedule plays into that, Monday night game, short week and then next week will be a short work. I think those components all lead to tapering down some. We're very fortunate with our facilities to do a lot of classrooms that we don't need to go down to the Hutson.
On the Packers' magic number to reach the playoffs:
You might need 12. The state of the NFC. This is a football team that's approaching this game like a playoff game. They need it. We need it.
On Lacy:
Eddie is in good spirits. We'll see how he feels tomorrow.
On linebacker Sam Barrington:
Sam is doing well. He's earned these opportunities. Last week, he was the game ball winner. He's doing some things this week. He's getting better. Sam is doing some good things.
On the secondary's performance in the second half of Sunday's game against the Atlanta Falcons:
I thought we started the game the way you'd like. Anytime you come off a big win, you concern yourself with a letdown. We didn't sustain it in the second half.
On the Packers' running back combination:
It's a couple different variables. Every week, we'll go through the game plan. I'll express to Tom Clements and Sam Gash how I think we should lay out the game plan. It's never written down in stone.
On the second-half issues against the Falcons:
I'll never apologize for a victory in December regardless of what it looks like. Some of the best lessons you learn in this game is when things don't go right.
What lessons do you learn from that second half?
It's the game of football. (Were) there areas we can do better job of communication? We don't evaluate the game on the final score or what our statistics are. There's fundamentals and techniques. There's big-play production. We went into game looking at big-play production and turnovers would decide it and that held through. It was not clean in the second half.