GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The meetings might not have been fun, but they were productive.
It was the bye week, and Dom Capers' defense had just come off a shelling at the hands of the New Orleans Saints. Sure, Capers was missing two starters in the secondary -- safety Morgan Burnett and cornerback Sam Shields -- but that can't explain how the Green Bay Packers allowed Mark Ingram to rush for 172 yards.
In one game, the Packers went from bad (31st out of the 32 teams) against the run to the worst.
Capers and head coach Mike McCarthy met at length that week to sort through what went wrong in the first half of the season and to hash out a plan to fix it.
Maybe you think McCarthy, an offensive-minded head coach, doesn't know much about defense. Capers will tell you differently.
"Let me tell you, any good offensive coach knows defense as well," Capers said. "A good defensive coach better know offense, too. And when you've got somebody that's an expert across the ball, you want to always gather as much information as you can."
By now, everyone knows the turnaround the Packers made in the second half of the season.
How it came together, though, is just coming into focus as the Packers prepare for Sunday's NFC Championship Game at the Seattle Seahawks.
"Ah, the bye week," McCarthy said. "We went through everything -- offense, defense, special teams. I think I had four, five topics that we looked at on defense, and then Dom and I got together. As I recall, there was three things that I felt needed to be addressed and the direction and the vision that I felt we needed to go, and the defensive staff made it happen."
McCarthy wouldn't say what those three things were but based on the way the Packers played since the bye, it all centered around Clay Matthews' move to inside linebacker in some packages. They had experimented with moving Matthews off the line of scrimmage early in the season in a 4-3 alignment, but they junked that after only three games before restarting it after the bye. Restarting that also marked the beginning of linebacker Sam Barrington's increased role, which coincided with linebacker A.J. Hawk's reduction in snaps.
"We needed to fix the problems area of our defense," Matthews said this week. "Obviously, we had given up way to much in the run game. I think that was essential to what we were trying to stop."
Matthews wasn't sure whose idea it was, but he figures McCarthy had a hand in it.
"I don’t know what happens behinds the scenes," Matthews said. "But yeah, what the head man says goes, so I'm sure he’s very much involved."
And Capers, a veteran of 29 NFL seasons as a coach, said he had no issue with that.
"As always, Mike's going to give his input on things," said Capers, a two-time NFL head coach. "We tried to respond in a way to where we had a little extra time to do some things to give ourselves the chance to get better. We didn't want to stay the same.
"Mike's a tremendous guy to work for, and you have a great appreciation for that. Being in that position for nine years myself, you just understand when you're working for a guy who's very competent and very good and if you're working in an organization like this, yeah I appreciate that."
When the players returned from the bye week, McCarthy stood in front of them in the first team meeting and shared his vision for the second half of the season.
"As soon as we got back, we understood that we had to get better," defensive back Micah Hyde said. "Coach came into the team meeting room to talk about it. Dom, in the defensive team meeting, talked about it. We all knew what we needed to do."
McCarthy then left Capers, his assistants and the players to implement it.
"Coach Mike lets him do his job," Hyde said. "He'll never come into our defensive meeting room and try to show up Dom or anything like that. I think they work well together. Whatever coach brings to Dom, he presents to us. I really respect that they can work together because I know it's not like that everywhere. Coach will come in every now and then, but he lets Dom do his stuff."