INDIANAPOLIS -- It might have seemed awkward for Mike McCarthy to talk about his new general manager with that person, Brian Gutekunst, seated next to him in the private room of a downtown restaurant, but the Green Bay Packers coach was asked what he needed from the first-time GM.

“Consistency, support, communication, stay the same,” McCarthy said Wednesday during a break from the NFL scouting combine. “I believe that’s the best advice I can give.”

Then Gutekunst butted in.

“Really, really good players,” Gutekunst said.

To which McCarthy replied: “I’ll try to keep the pressure off you.”

It was a brief exchange during a 90-minute off-site session that included a handful of reporters, the longtime coach and the neophyte general manager, but coupled with Gutekunst’s comments earlier in the day about free agency, it left the impression that the month of March could be much different for the Packers than it was under former GM Ted Thompson.

“Obviously, there’s limits in what you can do, but we’d like to be really aggressive and see [if] we can be in every conversation,” Gutekunst said during his first combine news conference as a general manager. “Now, whether that leads to us ending up signing a bunch or not, we’ll see. Like I said, there’s limitations there. But we’d like to be as aggressive as we can to try to improve our football team. At the same time, it’s a smaller market, and it’s a little bit riskier market. So I think as my mentor and predecessor would say, you have to be very cautious as you enter that. But I think we’d like to look at every option we can.”

According to Gutekunst, his staff meetings on free agency were “a little more extensive than they have been in the past.” Those meetings, along with draft preparation, consumed most of his first month as general manager.

“I do get the sense that we’re going to certainly explore and look at things that maybe we haven’t in the past,” Packers president Mark Murphy said in an interview at the combine. “Whether we end up doing a lot more, I think time will tell on that.”

The first inkling should come during the two-day negotiating period before free agency opens on March 14.

To Gutekunst, free-agency preparation is the key. The market can be unpredictable, so he wants to be ready to act on a moment’s notice. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he will jump in during the opening days, but he might not wait as long as Thompson often did -- when the former GM actually signed free agents, that is.

Gutekunst wouldn’t say whether he will need to release some high-priced veterans or restructure their contracts in order to be aggressive in free agency. He said he would prefer to keep veterans such as Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb and Clay Matthews if they fit his plan. But addressing veterans is one of the many scenarios he has run through with his scouts. At this point, the Packers are about $16 million under the projected salary cap for 2018, and they still have to find a way to make the inevitable contract extension for quarterback Aaron Rodgers work.

“The big thing I’ve stressed with our guys is we’re going to be as prepared as we can to know those scenarios and to know what each player’s value is in free agency, the draft and so forth, so when those opportunities present themselves, if it makes our team better, we’ll pull those triggers on whatever side that falls on,” Gutekunst said. “My thing is if we’ve done the work and we’re prepared and the opportunity presents itself, if we have to do something to create room, I think we’re prepared to do that.”

Shortly after the lunchtime session at Harry & Izzy’s steakhouse, McCarthy took his turn at the podium for his combine news conference.

Free agency was a topic, of course, and with Gutekunst’s remarks about finding “really, really good players” still fresh in the minds of those who sat with McCarthy and his new GM for lunch, McCarthy offered an optimistic-sounding answer.

“Well, we like the word 'aggressive,'” he said. “But I think it’s like anything: You have to just be in touch with the reality of the process. The process of veteran free agency is different today than it was prior to Brian being the GM, so it’s a whole different breakdown and approach. That’s the first part of it. So you’ve got the evaluation stage, then the application of it is really what it’s all about. There’s not just one thing that leads directly to another. We don’t want to lose good players. That’s something we always focus on, particularly our own. We’ve spent pretty much our 12 years here really focusing on improving from within.

“But we need outside resources. We’ve determined that. But at the end of the day, it’s a market. It’s a market that every team is involved in, and we’ll see what happens.”