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| associated press |
Green Bay - He saved everything. Every receipt. Every pay stub. Every bill dating to 1989.
Any transaction Mike McCarthy made is archived inside his old home office.
Today, the Green Bay Packers head coach and his family live in a remodeled home on the east side. In July, McCarthy finally was able to sell that first Green Bay home on the west side. Everything - all the furniture, kitchen accessories, whatever - was moved out in a timely fashion.
But he kept procrastinating with the office. Inside those stacks of boxes lies the timeline of McCarthy's career. The bridge from then to now.
There was Alex Van Pelt's college interception breakdown from 1990 at the University of Pittsburgh. There were all the quarterback footwork tapes from Kansas City. There were the piles and piles of weekly game plans from New Orleans, from San Francisco, from Green Bay.
"It's sickening," McCarthy said. "I didn't have much of a life."
He's considered an architect of the quarterback position, the modern-day standard. McCarthy has worked with Joe Montana, Rich Gannon, Steve Bono, Matt Hasselbeck, Brett Favre, Aaron Brooks and, of course, Aaron Rodgers. But he never even played the position. McCarthy was a tight end at Baker University (Kan.). His first job? Coaching linebackers at Fort Hays State.
The making of this Quarterback M.D. is rooted in his first 10 years as a coach. McCarthy did "the whole sleep-in-the-office thing." He learned from experts, he formed his own style. An obsessive attention to detail. A complete deconstruction of the position. Insomnia. And pointed one-on-one attention.
That's what it took to reach this leather chair inside Lambeau Field.
"I never felt the 'you never played the position' (criticism)," McCarthy said. "It's been said to me, it's been written about me, but I feel I can sit down and talk quarterback play with anybody. I feel I've definitely created that same environment here in Green Bay.
"It's all about taking care of the most important position in football."
The program
It was a dream setup. McCarthy walked from his parents' home to the University of Pittsburgh across Schenley Park in minutes. If McCarthy could have signed "a 25-year assistant coach contract" at Pittsburgh, he would have signed in a heartbeat.
So the pay didn't matter. The insane hours, irrelevant.
"I loved every minute of it," McCarthy said. "I couldn't get enough of it."
A graduate volunteer in 1989 and a graduate assistant for two more years, the young McCarthy was coach Paul Hackett's apprentice. Pick any quarterback he's ever coached. From Pittsburgh's Van Pelt in 1989 to Rodgers in 2012, McCarthy said, each quarterback would recognize 70-80% of his teaching methods. These three years provided the framework.
At Pitt, McCarthy's job was to break down all the defenses Pittsburgh faced. And while McCarthy "didn't make a dime," he was glued to Van Pelt's progress. He was enamored with the year-to-year development of a quarterback. Van Pelt went on to shatter Dan Marino's passing record at Pitt.
"We learned the system and grew within the system together," said Van Pelt, now the Packers' running backs coach. "It was his first time being exposed to the West Coast (offense), as well as mine."
Hackett was the driving force, dissecting quarterback play down to weight distribution on the second step of a drop.
"You may be as detailed as Paul Hackett but you won't be more detailed," McCarthy said. "Guys like him, he lived it. He took it home at night."
So McCarthy did, too. At Pitt, he slept about two hours a night. When Hackett became offensive coordinator at Kansas City in 1993, he took McCarthy with him. Suddenly, McCarthy shared a sideline with Joe Montana. A four-time Super Bowl champ, "an encyclopedia of quarterback play."
As the Chiefs' quality control coach, McCarthy armed himself with a notebook and pen at all times. He attended every quarterback meeting, taking notes of every conversation among Hackett, Montana and Dave Krieg. Make no mistake, McCarthy was the student in this relationship. Montana was nearly a decade older.
In awe, McCarthy watched seven-on-seven drills. With Montana, the ball never touched the ground.
"His fundamentals were flawless," McCarthy said. "He was such a great athlete but he was so smooth and cool with his approach and he had no wasted movement. I don't think people realize how good of an athlete he really was. He was so dang accurate with the ball."
And after the 1994 season, McCarthy was promoted to quarterbacks coach. His big break, his opportunity.
That off-season, McCarthy met a handful of friends at a restaurant back home in Pittsburgh. In five years, their buddy had made it. They congratulated him. They patted him on the back. They talked about the surreal possibility of coaching " the Joe Montana."
Then, one of McCarthy's friends shot him a skeptical glare.
"Let me ask you a question," the friend asked. "What in the (expletive) are you going to teach Joe Montana?"
Everyone laughed, and McCarthy tried answering the question. He mumbled something about footwork and . . . stopped himself. He had nothing. Yet.
Montana retired, and McCarthy remained unproven, humbled. But finally, the position was his.
Taking over
For a coach who has become so consumed by the "body clock" these days, this was torture. In Kansas City, McCarthy took that clock and smashed it with a sledgehammer.
Maybe he drank coffee. Maybe it was Coke. Rich Gannon can't remember. Something spiked with caffeine had to fuel his coach.
As the quarterbacks coach, McCarthy's day typically lasted from 5:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. Only when the schedule dipped into November did the former Chiefs quarterback notice fatigue in his coach. The team typically practiced outside, in the frigid weather, and returned indoors for a film session. Heat blasted.
"His eyes were rolling in his head," Gannon said. "He was awake. He wasn't sleeping or anything. But I could just see him fighting it. He was dying. And he knew he had another seven or eight hours in him."
After five years of hustling, of absorbing that "sickening" amount of information, it was McCarthy's time. He didn't want to blow it. The first true quarterback he taught, hands on, was Gannon.
Over their four years together, Gannon started only 19 games. But it was McCarthy who helped Gannon morph from journeyman to juggernaut. Behind the scenes, he revitalized the quarterback's career. Eventually in Oakland, Gannon would make four Pro Bowls, earn league MVP honors and reach the Super Bowl.
McCarthy benefited, too. From 1995-'98, he evolved from student to teacher. Those notes from Hackett, from Montana, were his guide.
"He was so organized and so detailed and had such a good way of breaking it down - and he was such a young coach at the time," Gannon said. "If I had his quality of coaching early in my career, boy, things would have gone a lot smoother. He just took it to another level."
Like, say, the tests during his quarterback school. Literally, 10-page tests. The first part was an essay. McCarthy asked each quarterback to describe the Chiefs' version of the West Coast offense "from a philosophical perspective." The rest of the test was multiple choice, fill in the blank and short answer.
On the field during his QB school, McCarthy forced his charges to visualize a defense. Before a snap - no defense, no receivers, no linemen on the field - he'd call out a defensive formation, such as "under front, three sky with a Mike blitz," Gannon said. On the fly, the quarterback had to drop back and react with proper footwork.
"So it's all mental," Gannon said. "We got so many mental reps, we were so, so, so far ahead."
Those boxes in the office began to mount.
"I've played 17 years and I never had a quarterback coach like Mike," Gannon said. "He was the best I ever had, because at the end of the week, I felt like the most prepared player on the field."
'Build a house'
For Matt Hasselbeck, the writing was on the wall. In 1999, the Packers signed Rick Mirer and drafted Aaron Brooks in the fourth round. Hasselbeck was a practice-squad player, a camp arm.
So he hedged his bets. In Green Bay, the second-year quarterback drove a cheap Volkswagen Beetle and lived on a month-to-month lease.
McCarthy, the new Packers quarterbacks coach, had grandiose ideas. But Hasselbeck's confidence flickered. McCarthy noticed. One spring day at the facilities - as the two watched film alone - he hit pause for a moment.
McCarthy saw the VW bug. He knew about the apartment.
"If I was you right now," Hasselbeck remembers McCarthy telling him, "I would let everybody know that you expect to win the No. 2 job. If I'm you, I'd sell that Volkswagen bug you're driving and I'd get a truck. And I'd go get out of that rental and I'd build a house."
So that's what Hasselbeck did. He bought a Jeep. He built a house from scratch. And he crushed his competition to win the backup quarterback job behind Favre.
X's, O's and all-nighters carried McCarthy through his early years as a quarterbacks coach. But a lot of coaches are smart. A lot of coaches stay up late. To turn the corner, he treasured one-on-one attention.
To date, Hasselbeck believes that single off-season was the springboard to this career, to his three Pro Bowls and NFC title in Seattle. It all started with a house and a Jeep.
"It was almost like he was saying to me, 'Listen, it's not all about doing this and doing that,' " Hasselbeck said. "It's a mind-set. You have to get your teammates to trust you. You need to get everybody in this building to believe in you.' I think he was saying in a sense, 'I don't know if you really believe in you.'
"He just instilled in me more, 'Hey are you in or are you all in?' "
With Favre in Mississippi, McCarthy and Hasselbeck spent nearly every day together in the off-season of 1999. Two single guys living the high life in Green Bay. They hit the classroom and the field daily. All practice reps and drills were compared to McCarthy's quarterbacks in Kansas City at that exact point of their development.
In the evening, McCarthy invited Hasselbeck over to grill steak and talk about Joe Montana, the West Coast offense, the future. And if they were feeling adventurous? The two headed to Wal-Mart together.
"There weren't a ton of people around," Hasselbeck said. "There wasn't a ton going on. We just studied a lot of football."
Hasselbeck grew up fast, receding hairline and all. After one player-run, seven-on-seven session, Hasselbeck remembers Donald Driver and all the young receivers viewing him as a veteran. He was 24.
"I'm losing my hair and know the offense so well," Hasselbeck said. "They think I'm a seven-year vet just because (McCarthy) had taught me the offense so well."
The reward
After nearly 10 full minutes and 1,000 words - talking about Hackett, about Montana, about Gannon, about his core beliefs - McCarthy catches his breath.
"Hell," he says, "I could talk about this all day, to be honest with you."
That's because he has now come full circle. The grad assistant with no quarterback background went on to serve as offensive coordinator in New Orleans and San Francisco and now coaches the league MVP back in Green Bay. In watching Rodgers, McCarthy has Montana flashbacks.
"When I think about fundamental quarterback play, I think of Aaron and Joe Montana," McCarthy said. "The productivity is obviously there, but just the way they play the position - their footwork, the balance, the athletic ability, the accuracy of the football, the vision, the difference between vision and eye discipline."
Seeing an offense built from scratch cannot be underestimated, McCarthy emphasizes. At Pitt, he watched Hackett's installation firsthand - he learned the "why" behind everything - and eventually did the same thing in the NFL.
In Green Bay, McCarthy believes new quarterbacks coach Ben McAdoo will benefit from this training. He's passing it on.
So sifting through those boxes at his old home was a trip back in time. "Memory lane," McCarthy said. It took the coach back to Pittsburgh, to Kansas City, to those early days with quarterbacks. What could have been a four-hour job turned into three days. Eventually, the boxes were transported.
And in Green Bay, the teaching continues.
"There's always something to do. There's always something to study," McCarthy said. "There's always an angle to try to gain an edge. You could really drive yourself nuts just with the absorption of the schematic challenge of the game. It can absorb you. And it did me."
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