Green Bay Packers: Comparing Mike McCarthy and Jason Kidd
By Jim Quinlan
The Green Bay Packers have struggled so far this season and most fans are starting to recognize that coaching may be the issue. This Packers situation is very similar to the situation last year with the Milwaukee Bucks and Jason Kidd.
The Green Bay Packers’ head coach Mike McCarthy has been around a long time and the team has had success under him. Unfortunately, his coaching is becoming stale to a lot of fans who are now calling for the Super Bowl winning coach to be fired.
Even though Jason Kidd didn’t experience the same type of success, Milwaukee Bucks’ fans had a similar experience with him last season. Ultimately, Kidd was let go and the Bucks are in a much better place this season after bringing in Mike Budenholzer.
Here are the three biggest similarities between the Bucks team under Kidd and the Packers under McCarthy.
3. Questionable playing time decisions
It may be so long ago now to remember some of the lineup decisions Kidd made early last year, but I’m here to remind you that he played the likes of DeAndre Liggins, Gary Payton II and Sean Kilpatrick. Even though the Bucks were banged up early last year and they were forced into playing some questionable guys, they also had Sterling Brown sitting right there ready to go and didn’t elect to use him.
There was also the situation when Kidd forgot Macolm Brogdon was on the team and Giannis Antetokounmpo asked Brogdon why he hadn’t played yet. Fortunately, the Bucks rotation under new coach Mike Budenholzer has been very consistent this year.
McCarthy has also had some questionable playing time decisions over the years but most notably this year with Aaron Jones. From the first game Jones played this year, it was clear to everyone that he was the best Packer running back. Sorry, clear to everyone EXCEPT McCarthy. Graham Barfield provided some great statistics here on just how good Aaron Jones has been:
He’s not just been the best Packer’s running back but he’s been one of the NFL’s best as well. It looks like Jones is starting to become the main cog in the backfield now, but it has taken McCarthy about eight weeks to come around to something that has been so obvious to almost everyone else from Week 3 when Jones played his first game. This realization may have come too late for the Packers to save their season.