McCarthy on being fired: "Couldn't have been handled any worse."
Mike McCarthy seems to still be in disbelief he was fired by the Green Bay Packers after losing to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 13.
“If we missed the playoffs, I expected change might happen,” McCarthy told ESPN. “But the timing surprised me. Actually, it stunned me. It couldn’t have been handled any worse.”
After the season, McCarthy was pursued by the New York Jets, but didn’t get offered the job — it went to fired Miami Dolphins coach Adam Gase.
That may have led to him saying he was going to sit out a year before making a coaching comeback.
Hard to say if teams will come calling after next season. His incident at his step-son’s WIAA playoff boys basketball game isn’t going to help.
McCarthy was accused of confronting and berating referees after his step-son’s team lost by a point.
The Pulaski School District said McCarthy followed officials as they left a game.
But, back to being fired, McCarthy said, “it was hard to swallow,” the way he Packers president Mark Murphy let him go.
“Every time I released an individual, you get your words right,” McCarthy continued. “There’s a personal component to it. You know he has a family. He’s family. There wasn’t any of that. So that was off. The way people leave that building was very important to me. That’s a part of the business.”