GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Mike McCarthy came out in full defense of his players, his coaches and his own track record the day after his Green Bay Packers lost 47-25 on the road against the Tennessee Titans.
The 11th-year head coach spoke strongly on all accounts less than 24 hours after Sunday's loss dropped the Packers to 4-5. They have lost three straight and four of their last five.
"Let's just state the facts: I'm a highly successful NFL head coach," McCarthy said Monday as part of answer that lasted 2½ minutes. "With that, I've never looked at the ride to this point as smooth or whatever the words you used. To me, it's always bumpy, and to me that's the joy of it. That's this game. That's how hard it is in the NFL. Really, what you did last year or 2010, as we know, doesn't factor."
Other than 2013, when quarterback Aaron Rodgers missed seven games because of a broken collarbone, the Packers have their worst record after nine games since Rodgers' first year as a starter, when they went 6-10 in 2008. That's also the last time they missed the playoffs.
If there are going to be changes around Lambeau Field this week, they apparently won't come from McCarthy, who has a 108-60-1 record in the regular season and has led the Packers to the playoffs each of the past seven years.
"I'm not into shock and awe, or [a] torch the landscape-type person," McCarthy said. "I'm a builder. I'm a developer. I've said that since the first day I arrived here. You build a program, culture is what makes it go, you have to invest in that culture every single day, and that's my big-picture focus."
The Packers remain just one game behind the NFC North co-leaders, Detroit and Minnesota, and still play both of them again, in the final two weeks of the season. The Packers have a 9-12 record, including playoffs, in their past 21 games, and some of the same issues that dogged them last season have returned. They have allowed at least 30 points in four of their past five games. According to Elias, no Packers team has done that since 1953.
Offensively, Rodgers hasn't played up to his MVP level, and the Packers haven't had any semblance of a consistent running game since Eddie Lacy went on injured reserve because of an ankle injury last month.
"People outside of our room don't feel really good about the now," McCarthy said. "Personally, I enjoy these type of moments. I think this is kind of how my life has gone professionally. That's just a personal thought. This is about our team, and I trust and believe in what we do every day -- what they do on the practice field, the conversations in the room, the conversations during the game, the reaction to the tough moments."
The Packers got off to a miserable start for the second straight game. A week after they allowed the Indianapolis Colts to return the opening kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown, the Packers' defense let DeMarco Murray score on a 75-yard touchdown run on the Titans' first play from scrimmage. The Titans scored touchdowns on their first four drives of the game, and five of their first six.
"Every week there's a different twist and turn you're not going to see coming, and how you handle that is important," McCarthy said. "We didn't handle that very well [Sunday]. ... When a guy's wide open or he runs 75 yards unabated for a touchdown, something when wrong there. I mean, something obviously went wrong there.
"So that's what we need to learn from and improve on. So twists and turns definitely weren't handled properly by us, but that's yesterday. If you need to learn big-picture stuff, that's all there in front of you. I really don't spend a lot of time on that. I'm into the now, and it makes our players stay into the now and improve."