McCarthy Tries To Cost Packers Again

How can a coach almost cost his team another victory?  Let me count the ways.

1. Even though Favre is playing great and the Packers can’t run very well, McCarthy once again wanted to establish the run.  This allowed the Chiefs to stay in the game until the end.  Late in the game, he could have wrapped it up with a TD after a long pass to Driver, but ran three times so he could kick the field goal.  When the Packers attacked the defense aggressively with passes, they moved the ball, but did this far less often than they should have.
2. The Packers continue to take stupid penalties and repetitive penalties, which means he does not put the disciplines in place to eliminate this.  They also had to waste two timeouts in the second half, which again, can come back to haunt you at the end.
3. With a little over a minute to play, and the Packers up by 4, he did not instruct his defensive players to go down if they got a turnover.  The Chiefs were out of timeouts, so if you go down, the game is over after you kneel once or twice.  If you return the turnover for a touchdown, you are up by 11, but the other team has the opportunity to return the kickoff, get an onsides kick, and have almost a minute to try to win.  Why give the opponent any chance?  Woodson did return an interception for a TD instead of going down.
4. After Woodson’s interception return, the Packers were up by 11 with 0:58 left.  The only thing that can hurt you in this situation is a big-play, quick score.  Instead of squib kicking to minimize the chances of a return or kicking out of bounds to eliminate the chances, he had his kicker kick off deep.  What if the returner ran it back?  The Chiefs would have been down by 4 with the chance to get an onsides kick.

I believe something happened to McCarthy at halftime of the bear game, because prior to that, he would learn from his mistakes and make adjustments.  He has done a horrible job from the second half of the bear game through this game.  And the fact that the Packers are 8-0 does not take away from the horrible strategic coaching.  Perhaps he is a good motivator, but his game strategy needs a lot of work.

As an aside, today’s game again proved why instant replay is so important.  With the Packers up by 4 late in the game, the Chiefs completed a pass deep in Packer territory.  The receiver never got his second foot down inbounds, but the play was ruled a catch.  McCarthy’s challenge reversed this incorrect call.  Had instant replay not been used, the Packers might have lost another game on a bad call.