GREEN BAY, Wis. -- If Mike McCarthy decides to make a defensive coordinator change this offseason -- assuming that it's still his job to make that call for the Green Bay Packers -- he might point to the final 17 minutes of Sunday night's 42-24 loss at Washington as the deciding factor.

It's when, as longtime coordinator Dom Capers described it, "all hell broke loose" on his defense.

"There's 2:07 to go in the third quarter, and it's 16-10, and we have 'em in third-and-11," Capers said Monday. "And that's when kind of all hell broke loose. They hit the 44-yarder up the field. I think at that point in time we had given up like 250 yards or something like that. We played very competitive football through three quarters basically. So we give up the 44-yarder for the touchdown -- that takes the score to 22-10. And then we come back the next series, they go two plays and hit a 70-yarder on us, and so things really flipped from a tight, contested game."

It was reminiscent of another prime-time loss during the McCarthy era that prompted a change. Back in 2008, a late-season 51-29 loss at New Orleans on Monday Night Football sealed then-defensive coordinator Bob Sanders' fate. McCarthy fired Sanders after the season and hired Capers.

There were no firings or even the threat of a change on Monday, the day after Capers' unit gave up 40-plus points for the second straight game. It's the same stance McCarthy took after the previous week's 47-25 loss at Tennessee.

"Absolutely [not]," McCarthy said. "My focus is on beating the Eagles."

Still, there was no forgetting that the Packers allowed three 50-yard plays in the fourth quarter alone. According to ESPN Stat & Information, the Packers were the first team to do that since 2001. And no team has allowed that many 50-yard plays in the fourth quarter all season.

"We let it get away from us in the fourth quarter by not making our plays and them making big plays, and it's a shame because it really affected the game," Capers said. "And it was a game where our offense was coming back and they were moving the ball. So I think the thing we have to do is we've got to look at it with the guys. I liked a lot of things that we did in the first three quarters up until that 2:07. Like I say, it was a close ballgame, and then for whatever reason, we blew up. They had as much yardage in those last four series as they had the first three quarters up to that 44-yard touchdown pass."

While much of the heat fell on the Packers' struggling fill-in cornerbacks, McCarthy attributed the season-long defensive woes to a lack of takeaways. Capers' unit, which has thrived on turnovers over the years, has just seven interceptions in nine games -- and only one from a cornerback (Damarious Randall, who has missed six of the last seven games). From 2009 through last season, the Packers led the league in interceptions (148) and ranked fifth in total takeaways (204). This season, they rank tied for 17th in interceptions and tied for 23rd in takeaways.

Maybe there isn't a defensive coordinator in the NFL who could win with Quinten Rollins, LaDarius Gunter and Demetri Goodson as their top three cornerbacks, but it's clear that that position has hampered the defense as much as the lack of a legitimate running back as hindered the offense.

"There's no reinventing the wheel," McCarthy said. "We've talked about this since the day I arrived here. We have a system of football -- offense, defense and special teams -- that accommodates any football player on our roster. If we've got to reinvent the wheel in Week 11 or Week 12, we haven't set our plan the right way for the season."