{"id":909904,"date":"2026-07-03T13:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/909904\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T13:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:44:21","slug":"former-nfl-coach-tells-revealing-story-of-what-he-learned-preparing-for-mike-mccarthy-this-is-insane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/909904\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NFL Coach Tells Revealing Story Of What He Learned Preparing For Mike McCarthy: ‘This Is Insane’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier today, we wrote about Charlie Batch\u2019s comments about the Pittsburgh Steelers becoming a pass-first team under Mike McCarthy. Even with a soon-to-be 43-year-old Aaron Rodgers and two talented backs in Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle,<\/a> the Steelers are expected to lean on its passing game. Former NFL coach Tim Lester can attest to that. He recently shared his experience playing McCarthy, and the pattern that quickly became clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first playoff game three years ago, it was the Cowboys,\u201d Lester said on the ANF podcast<\/a> (hat tip to reader Brogan who alerted me to the comments). \u201cWith Dak Prescott. Round 1 of the playoffs. For whatever reason, Mike McCarthy would not call two runs in a row. He just wouldn\u2019t do it. I\u2019ve never seen statistical evidence, and I majored in math. So I love numbers. I went to our d-coordinator and went, \u2018Hey buddy, this is insane. They will not run the ball. They won\u2019t. And if they do, they can have 8 yards.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d run on 1st down for 8 yards. They\u2019d throw on 2nd and 2, throw on 3rd and 2, and punt. Play shell coverage. They\u2019re going to throw the ball. Dare them to run it twice in a row. I think they did it one time. They ran for 8 and 7 and went pass, pass, pass punt. It was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

A longtime college coach who is the offensive coordinator at Iowa, Lester spent the 2023 season as a senior analyst for the Green Bay Packers. With a 9-8 record and second-place finish in the NFC North, Green Bay clinched a Wild Card spot and travelled to Dallas for the Wild Card Round. The Cowboys entered as touchdown favorites but ran into immediate trouble, trailing 27-0 until the final play of the first half. Green Bay kept the pressure on after the break and won, 48-32.<\/p>\n

Is Lester\u2019s story true? Partially. In the playoff game itself, not so much. Through the first three quarters, including receiver carries, there were five instances of Dallas running the ball on back-to-back plays. Including on Dallas\u2019 first two plays of the game \u2013 Tony Pollard runs of six and one yard.<\/p>\n

Dallas\u00a0did\u00a0finish the game with 60 passes compared to 25 rushes but much of that was circumstantial. The Cowboys had a predictably pass-heavy two-minute drive to close out the first half, ending in a TE Jake Ferguson touchdown. The offense spent the fourth quarter passing in a desperate comeback bid.<\/p>\n

However, in the Cowboys\u2019 final two regular-season games, there were only six combined instances of the offense running the ball back-to-back times (one of which was a four-straight carry sequence). A deeper study would be needed to assess true answers, but that is one piece of evidence in Lester\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

Tested, Lester\u2019s story doesn\u2019t fully check out. It\u2019s fair to assume in game planning, he picked up on a trend of Dallas double-dipping runs infrequently. In the playoff game, that pattern didn\u2019t quite hold as strong.<\/p>\n

Throughout the 2023 regular season, Dallas preferred to throw. It finished eighth in pass attempts and 14th in rushes. But the team understandably leaned on franchise quarterback Dak Prescott to make plays to star receiver CeeDee Lamb.<\/p>\n

With Aaron Rodgers in his final season, McCarthy must find offensive balance. Rodgers can\u2019t be treated like Prescott and throw the ball nearly 600 times like Dallas did that season. It\u2019s reasonable to assume McCarthy understands that and will lean on the running game when needed, though it will be a stat worth monitoring throughout the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier today, we wrote about Charlie Batch\u2019s comments about the Pittsburgh Steelers becoming a pass-first team under Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":909905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[39],"tags":[8998,9001,139638,1232,1545,62,368034,939,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-909904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-green-bay-packers","tag-mike-mccarthy","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-sports","tag-tim-lester","tag-trending","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116856348119915782","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}