McCarthy: Packers won't practice in Arizona
Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy spoke with the media for about 10 minutes Tuesday afternoon. Here are some highlights.
On likelihood of not having Davante Adams: He has a knee injury, and this is how these things normally go. Davante told me after the game he was fine, and trainers feel a little differently than that. We don’t practice until tomorrow. I’ll have a better gauge of it then.
On Jared Abbrederis’ growth as a receiver: Yeah, he’s doing a lot of good things. The two-point play was something that was practiced. It’s nice when you get the defense and the mechanics of the protection, and he just ran a great route.
On David Bakhtiari's (ankle) and Sam Shields’ (concussion) health status: Definitely, I put them in the same boat (as Adams). We’ll know more tomorrow.
On Quinten Rollins' (quadriceps) health status: I hope so. I know it was a pretty big blow in the game when he told me about it. He’s been knocking it out of the park with his rehab.
On travel plan: Yes, we’re leaving Friday 1 p.m. We’ll practice here. Friday is a normal Saturday for us. (Packers didn't practice in Arizona before their game vs. Cardinals three weeks ago.)
On more confidence with offensive line now that JC Tretter looks like a serviceable backup at left tackle: I feel a lot better. I think that was clearly something we needed to improve on from prior games, and JC gave us that. We had a couple rough spots in the first quarter with some assignments we were able to get cleaned up, and after that I thought our offensive line played extremely well, and JC played well.
On whether McCarthy has ever coached any offensive lineman who can play all five positions like Tretter: I’ll be honest with you, he can play six. You can throw tight end in there. He’s unique that way. His mental toughness is off the charts, and his understanding of the offense. He’ll be in the center-quarterback meeting today, and he’ll ask great questions.
On not being able to make clutch plays late in playoff losses: Personally, I look at it as a fundamental. It’s fundamental of Green Bay Packers football, and that’s big-play production. When you categorize subgroups of a game, critical plays are at the top of your list. That’s something our quarterback looks for, our defense looks for it. At the end of the day, you have to win your one-on-ones. As a team, we definitely believe that.
On safeties Ha Ha Clinton-Dix and Morgan Burnett being interchangeable: Very comfortable. I think that’s a huge part of having the flexibility and game-planning. That’s very important. I think if you look at the safety position today as opposed to a generation or two ago, the safety position has really been elevated and the necessity of having four. You need to have four guys who can play back there, especially with these great athletes at tight end. Just last week shows you have important safeties are.
On tempo helping offense: Tempo creates energy. Yeah, I agree with that. It’s part of being a no-huddle offense. That’s the way you prefer to play. We’re all about getting as many attempts at the plate as possible. That goes back to the offense, how we built this thing, it’s about playing as fast as you can.
On Randall Cobb in the backfield taking Eddie Lacy off the field: I think like anything, you go through the game-plan process, you have the personnel, and everything has to go through the personnel conversations. Then there’s the scheme. There’s a lot of variables in that. We’ve seen more base defense against our sub offense this year. Those are the types of things you look at, and you weigh it.
-rwood@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @ByRyanWood