Jul 30, 2011 -- 11:46am

GREEN BAY – When Mike McCarthy had his first full-fledged team meeting with the defending Super Bowl XLV champions Saturday morning, he wanted to make one thing perfectly clear.

“We’re competing for a championship. We’re not defending anything,” the Green Bay Packers coach told reporters in his annual pre-training camp news conference, giving a preview of the speech he’d give his players at 9 o’clock. “We’ve climbed Mountain 45, it was a great climb, it was one that we’ll have experience that we can probably pull forward to this year. But we don’t get any wins, and there’s nothing really to gain from being the champion last year.

“This is a whole new journey. This is a whole new football team. We’re at the bottom of the mountain just like everyone else is right now. We’re at the starting line. … There’s a path out there for us to get to Indianapolis (for Super Bowl XLVI). It’s our responsibility, our focus, our commitment to stay on that path. And that’s the way we view it.”

That’s not to say that McCarthy intends to change his approach with his players, being tougher on them to prevent complacency.

“I think I need to be consistent. I’m not going to turn into a phony guy that’s going to yell at ‘em to yell at ‘em because we won the Super Bowl last year,” McCarthy said. “I think that’s garbage.”

A training camp unlike any other due to the offseason NFL lockout began with players reporting on Friday for physicals and a conditioning test. McCarthy said they spent Saturday morning in the weight room, then had their 9 a.m. team meeting, kicking off a long day that was to culminate in the first practice of camp – in helmets and shorts, per NFL post-lockout rules – at 7 p.m. McCarthy said he was “pleased” with how the players fared in the conditioning tests but acknowledged that this camp will be rife with challenges.

“It’s going to be a challenge for everybody. Everybody knows what the landscape is, and it’s a challenge that we accept and we’re looking forward to as a coaching staff,” said McCarthy, whose position coaches were working “around the clock” with the rookie signees to prepare them as much as possible for their first NFL practice. “We’re looking for more quality work to come out of the gate, make sure we get our practice structure established. I’m more interested in getting the drills done properly than the speed of them

“I do not anticipate that first three practices will be a good gauge on where we are as a team. I feel like it’s important to be smart. We have a limited amount of time to get ready for our home opener, to select a 53-man roster, so it’s important that we make full use of our practices.”

McCarthy acknowledged that the entire offseason being wiped out by the lockout has made it “a totally different year for so many different reasons. It’s a new team. It’s a new training camp. It’s a new schedule. ... Change is constant in our business, and changing things up for our veterans will be good for them. There’s no one that’s very comfortable right now. … Because we know that we’re going to have less days on the field, and we’ve got to make sure we max out those opportunities.”

McCarthy said the team would do the first of nine installations on offense, defense and special teams on Saturday night, as usual. The difference is that those nine installations have been done during organized team activity practices during the offseason, and they are re-installations once camp begins. The first practice in pads is Monday night, in advance of the team’s first off day on Tuesday.

McCarthy said he had decided to go to a one-a-day schedule long before the collective bargaining agreement talks between NFL owners and the NFL Players Association ended two-a-day padded practices. During the first two weeks of camp, the Packers will practice at night almost exclusively, with the players doing corrections from the previous night’s practice in the morning, both in the film room and in walkthroughs inside the gym. McCarthy said those corrections were normally done on the field during practice but now are being moved inside.

Then, after lunch, the coaches will install portions of the scheme with the players, and they’ll then practice those plays at practice at night.

“Some people may look at it from the other side and see less practice, (and say) it looks like there’s a softness,” McCarthy said.. The challenge is to get the 100 mph practice, day in and day out, that prepares your team for football games. One-a-day schedules, frankly, is the schedule we’ve been working on as a staff for the last couple of years. What’s going on with the CBA really had no affect on this training camp practice structure. It’s something that we installed as a staff throughout the month of May and June.”

McCarthy said the rookies won’t necessarily get less of a playbook because of the missed offseason. “You may have to get more role-specific situations with your newer players quicker than you have in the past, obviously not having the spring,” McCarthy said. “But they’ll be pretty much asked to learn like they normally have. (The coaches will) just probably have to have a little more patience with them.”

McCarthy said six players – safety Morgan Burnett, tight end Jermichael Finley and defensive end Mike Neal from last year’s injured reserve, along with tight end Andrew Quarless, linebacker Diyral Briggs and undrafted rookie free agent nose tackle Elisha Joseph – will not be ready to practice to start camp.

“You want to be smart. I don’t want to be standing here tomorrow going through an injury report that has 10 guys on it,” McCarthy said. “It’s important we get through these next three days and we gets the pads on and get going the way you’re supposed to in training camp.”

While his players absorbed some criticism during the offseason for not organizing their own workouts during the lockout, McCarthy said he was fine with how they handled themselves.

“I was very comfortable with the decision the players made throughout the offseason,” McCarthy said. “I understand our business is about keeping score. We keep scoring in everything, I get that. That was a score that maybe we were perceived as we were losing. But I was comfortable with the way our players went about it.

“I spend a big part of my job on risk assessment. I'm sure there are teams that thought it was very productive and that's great. But based on the length of our season and where we were coming out of that season, I was fine with the way we went about it."

Now, however, it’s time to get to work.

“This league is not about survival, it’s about climbing,” McCarthy said. “It’s about growth, it’s about competing, to get better every single day.”

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Jason Wilde wrote: