INDIANAPOLIS — One month removed from losing in the NFC championship game, Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy is still thinking about what could have been. That’s no surprise considering McCarthy still thinks about the Packers’ NFC championship game overtime loss from 2007. And that was more than eight years ago.

This past season was one that seemed to be turning up all green and gold. Green Bay had a quarterback who would go on to win his second NFL Most Valuable Player award and had the league’s No. 1 scoring offense. Add that to the Packers’ 12-point lead over Seattle with less than three minutes on the clock and it sure seemed like it wouldn’t be a season McCarthy would ever have to look back on with "what-if" scenarios.

"I thought we were the best team in football when our season ended," McCarthy said Thursday during an off-site interview with beat writers. "You have to prove it on the field obviously."

That was a common feeling among Green Bay’s players the day after losing to the Seahawks.

"It’s frustrating when you should have won the game and you’re the better team, and I thought we were the better team all day except for three minutes," left guard Josh Sitton said on Jan. 19.

"I’ll say 30 years from now that I’ll feel like we were a better football team than they were," defensive back Micah Hyde said 18 hours after the game. "I think that’s a given. But the best team doesn’t always win."

McCarthy, who relinquished his offensive play-calling responsibilities earlier this offseason, felt very good about the way he’d prepared his team to be part of Super Bowl XLIX and perhaps win his second title in the past five years.

"I thought it was probably one of my best years of coaching," McCarthy said. "So I was hoping to be able to say it was the best, and winning in Phoenix would have done that. . . . This was a hell of a football team we had this year. And it grew. We had some bumps there early. I thought every time we were hit with a challenge, they accepted it and they worked at it and we got better."

The Packers were outright dominant at times during the 2014 season. Some of the most notable examples of that were the back-to-back games of scoring 50-plus points, going undefeated at Lambeau Field and being so far ahead on four occasions that Aaron Rodgers wasn’t even used in the fourth quarter.

"I’ve never had an offense this good," McCarthy said.

McCarthy explained how the team has a statistical formula of "16 principles of championship offense and defense," and Green Bay’s offense hit on 13 of them. The three principles that the Packers didn’t reach their goal on were only missed by a couple plays.

"If we could play at this level of offense from here on in, it will be the best offense pro football has seen," McCarthy said.

That’s not a statement any coach would make lightly.

"If every year looks like this year, we’re going to be carrying trophies around," McCarthy said later when asked about getting over the final hump and returning to the Super Bowl.

If every year looks like this year, we’re going to be carrying trophies around. Mike McCarthy on Green Bay's offense

With an offense McCarthy feels could be the best ever, it surprised many that he would opt to no longer call the plays. But for those that assume that decision was made as a result of frustrations over the NFC championship game loss, think again.

"If there was a Seattle game that made me make a change like that, it would have been the first one (in Week 1 of the regular season), not the last one," McCarthy said. "The things that went on in that (Week 1) game were very frustrating to me.

"When the communication part isn’t as fluent through your football team . . . players are to prepare, perform and communicate. So when one of your three key responsibilities is not at the level it needs to be, then as the leader you better have an issue with that. I don’t really have an issue with the last game as much as everybody (else)."

McCarthy’s reasoning behind changing his job responsibilities had more to do with the ways in which he wants to "attack the day" when it comes to dealing with every facet of Green Bay’s football operations. That will include being more heavily involved on defense and special teams, which he didn’t used to have much time for.

"Coordinators and play-callers, to me, that’s the toughest job in football," McCarthy said. "The coordinating or calling the defense or calling the offense, that’s the hardest job in football, in my opinion."

As McCarthy turns the keys of offensive play-calling over to associate head coach Tom Clements (as well as to Rodgers, who handles a lot from the line of scrimmage), it means his final moments in that role will be remembered as disappointing.

John Schneider, a De Pere, Wis. native and former Packers front-office executive who is the general manager for Seattle, has his own recent letdown to live with. In what was described by some analysts as the worst offensive play call in Super Bowl history, the Seahawks failed to win a second consecutive championship when Russell Wilson was intercepted in the end zone instead of letting Marshawn Lynch plow ahead for what would’ve likely been a one-yard, game-winning touchdown.

"I’m not over it," Schneider said Thursday at the Scouting Combine. "I think it’s always going to stay with you. It’s a part of life. There’s a lot of big games that I’ve been a part of that don’t go your way. . . . I think it drives you."

McCarthy and Schneider have dinner at the combine every year. When the two of them get together Saturday, McCarthy plans to share his own experiences in living with those unpleasant memories.

"It never totally goes away," McCarthy said. "I still think of the ’07 championship game. There’s things that remind you of plays and there’s things that remind you of games. There’s places, there’s a picture you have of somebody that reminds you of a game.

"He needs to know that he’s not going to wake up one day and it’s gone. It doesn’t happen. I think we all wake up at night. I know I wake up at night still thinking about plays all the time. It never shuts off."

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