Former Green Bay Packers’ head coach Mike McCarthy recently shared his thoughts on his firing from last season. He sat down with ESPN’s Rob Demovsky for a sit-down interview to talk about the situation.

McCarthy seemed stunned at how the decision was handled.

“If we missed the playoffs, I expected change might happen,” McCarthy told Demovsky, “But the timing surprised me. Actually, it stunned me. It couldn’t have been handled any worse.”

McCarthy compiled a 125-77-2 record in Green Bay since becoming the coach in 2006. He led them to nine playoff appearances, six division titles and a Super Bowl championship. However, the Packers were on their way to a second straight season of missing the playoffs and figured a change was needed.

The NFL is a business and if the results aren’t up to standards there will be moves made. McCarthy always understood that but appeared to be upset with the way it all went down.

It couldn’t have been handled any worse. Anytime you lose a close game, it’s a difficult time emotionally afterwards, but when you lose a home game at Lambeau Field in December, it’s really hard. And that hasn’t happened very often. I walked out of my press conference, and I’m thinking about the game, thinking about how our playoff shot was now minimal. That’s where my head was at. And when I was told Mark Murphy wanted to see me — and the messenger was cold and the energy was bad. Mark said it was an ugly loss, and it was time to make change. He said something about the offense and the special teams, and he didn’t think it was going to get any better. There was no emotion to it. That was hard.

Find the full interview with Demovsky here.