McCarthy: Montgomery has 'not made progress'
Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy spoke with the media Monday morning, which doubles as the team’s Thursday schedule on a typical Sunday-to-Sunday game week. Here are some highlights.
On Corey Lisnley and Bryan Bulaga: I thought they both did what they were asked to do. Today, we’re going to put the pads on and get into the heavier loads, and get a better idea. Ultimately, they need to be able to put their foot in the ground and explode. But they’re making progress.
On whether Linsley or J.C. Tretter will start at center when Linsley is healthy: We’ll just see how the week goes.
On Jared Abbrederis: He did everything. So he’s making progress too.
On Andrew Quarless’ practice status: Quarless will start today, yes sir.
On Quarless needing to knock off rust after missing two months: It’s a little bit different for each guy, because I think position has something to do with it too when you’re coming off these long injuries. The decision for him to start today was to line up with the padded practice.
On Ty Montgomery’s status: Ty has not made progress, no.
On why Ty Montgomery has not progressed: He hasn’t made much progress. I’m sure there’s going to be more testing and so forth. There’s different thresholds you make in your rehab, and we’re just not quite getting there.
On what worked for Lions at Lambeau Field: I thought their offense go into a rhythm. They did a good job getting the football to their playmakers. They have a good pass-run balance. They have three good backs, and Golden Tate is having a heck of a year. It’s a very balanced offense.
On message to team: Everybody talks about communication, everybody talks about trust. When you have a successful culture, there’s key things that you focus on, principles that you’ve had in the past. The fast of the matter is, just because you’ve had success doesn’t mean you’re always going to have success. I was very direct and honest about the things that we’re doing well. We know what our record is. We’ve had three games come down to the last play. When you talk to your players, about 10 percent hovers around what went wrong the week before. That’s just the nature of our business. We’re preparing for the Detroit Lions this week, and it’s my job to keep everybody focused on the target.
On scheduling quirk of playing consecutive Thursday games: It’s football. It’s the schedule. Every schedule has different challenges every year. When the schedules do come out, there’s always things you look at from a pure scheduling standpoint. These four games, we knew it would be a challenge. I’m not a fan of Thursday to Thursday, now going through it. I think it’s a stretch for both teams, but both teams are going through it.
On helping Randall Cobb get open more: It’s part of running an offense. When you put the ball down, you have ways of lining up and things you do to challenge the scheme they put in. you can always challenge that other side of the ball. It’s important for Randall Cobb to be a big part of our offense. That’s our focus every week.
On Damarious Randall’s status: I don’t know. I’ll know more today.
On Jeff Janis returning kicks: He’s doing a good job, and we’re definitely looking at him for this week.