That noise you hear is Green Bay Packers fans smashing anything they can get their hands on during the team's four-game losing skid.
The calls for firing general manager Ted Thompson, coach Mike McCarthy and defensive coordinator Dom Capers have been loud from all corners of Wisconsin. Mark Murphy, the heretofore silent Packers president, told WTMJ radio in Milwaukee he is as frustrated as the fans.
"I do hear from a lot of fans. And I tell fans: Like them, I'm disappointed," Murphy said, via ESPN.com's Rob Demovsky. "Certainly, the season hasn't gone the way we had all hoped, but there's a lot of football left to be played. And the other thing I tell people is, you've got to look at Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy's track record."
Thompson and McCarthy have made the playoffs seven straight seasons, tied with the New England Patriots for longest in the NFL. However, they sit two games back in the divisions with six games to play.
"We've been through difficult stretches before," Murphy said. "We've had consistent success, and it's hard to achieve that in the NFL, but I do sympathize with our fans. They want us to win, they want us to play better, and we've just got to work through a difficult patch. I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful. We've done it in the past and, hopefully, we can do it again."
Sure the Packers have been through losing streaks in the past three years, but there is a reason Aaron Rodgers isn't releasing any R-E-L-A-X proclamations this year: The defense is rancid. Green Bay has allowed no fewer than 31 points during their four-game skid and 153 total points during that span.
Despite the outcry from fans, don't expect heads to roll in Green Bay. Murphy defended the Packers patient approach to team-building.
"The [public perception] of that is, the Packers are really harmed because they don't have an individual owner who can go in and fire somebody," Murphy said. "Well, if you look across the league, when those individual owners do things like that, it usually doesn't turn out very well. The answer isn't just to fire people midseason, especially, [given that] we've had a run of success.
"Our coaches and personnel people and Ted and Mike have shown in the past they can turn things around. I think that taking that approach certainly makes more sense than just firing people to fire people."
It's true that churning through coaches and general managers usually leads to a cycle of losing -- ask Cleveland. It's also true that everyone needs to change their sheets when the bed gets messed in enough times.
