As the clinic portion of the off season starts to melt into the summer, and football season quickly approaches, many staffs are having the conversation on whether to install some new plays or wrinkles they picked up the last few months, or saw at coaching clinics, or or whether they should simply focus on getting better at what they already have in.
Head coaches at the NFL wrestle with those same questions, and Green Bay head coach Mike McCarthy told NFL.com that he has decided to go back to the basics with the Packers heading into 2016 rather than add a bunch of new stuff.
Last season, the Packers had their worst year offensively since Aaron Rodgers first took over the signal calling duties in 2008. They finished 15th in scoring, 25th in passing yards, and 23rd in the league in total yards. With four games left in the regular season, Mike McCarthy took back the play calling duties after initially handing them over to associate head coach of offense Tom Clements at the beginning of the year.
In the age of sexy RPO's, read options, and a variety of other offensive wrinkles, McCarthy is a staunch believer in mastering the basics and fundamentals.
"The best plays are still the basic plays. It's not the design of the play. It's what everybody can do with that design," McCarthy explained in the article. "That's what we have to get back to -- winning with the fundamentals, with players and not plays. When you get in tough times, offensively, we may have leaned a little more towards plays instead of focusing on developing players."
"That's a big part of my getting back in there full-time [calling plays]. That's how I built this thing, and that's how it should be ran. We got away from that a little bit."