

PHOENIX -- Before the fifth round of the NFL draft is over, the Green Bay Packers should have a shot at a running back who can help them right away.

The 2013 class is fairly rich in big-school backs who have produced big numbers against high-level competition. With six picks in the first five rounds, the odds of at least one back they like sitting high on their board is fairly good.

Based on the way coach Mike McCarthy is thinking, however, there is no need to reach for one.

Not with what he saw from DuJuan Harris, the 5-7, 214-pound fireplug who went from used car salesman to practice-squad laborer to starting running back in less than six weeks. Based on what Harris did in six games, McCarthy is all but ready to put him atop his depth chart come the start of training camp.

"He's going to play for us next season," McCarthy said during an NFC coaches media breakfast at the NFL owners meetings. "That's his responsibility if he wants to be the starter."

The remarkable part about Harris was that he got noticed running other teams' plays against the Packers defense. McCarthy wrestled with how soon to elevate him to the active roster and give him carries because in the Packers' system protecting quarterback Aaron Rodgers is as important as running for touchdowns.

Once the coaches were comfortable that Harris understood the blocking scheme -- and it didn't take that long, really -- they made the move. Harris was signed to the 53-man roster on Dec. 1 and eight days later broke off an 11-yard run on the Packers' first play of scrimmage against the Detroit Lions.

Over the final six games, he rushed 62 times for 257 yards (4.15 average) and four touchdowns and added nine catches for 81 yards.

In the 45-31 divisional playoff loss to San Francisco, he blew through the defense for an 18-yard touchdown run that gave the Packers a 14-7 lead. Had the defense not given up so many points so quickly after that, there's a chance McCarthy would have run Harris far more than 11 times.

"Once he got ready, I felt great about the way DuJuan finished the season," McCarthy said. "I'm looking forward to having him for an off-season and look for good things for him."

McCarthy said he and his offensive staff have some new plans for the running game after analyzing what they did a year ago when a combination of Cedric Benson, Alex Green, James Starks, Ryan Grant and Harris handled the majority of snaps.

Though he wouldn't be specific, McCarthy offered a few hints at what might be different, saying he wanted to play more into the strengths of the personnel and stick more with a one-two punch. It could be inferred that he wouldn't be asking his offensive linemen to do things they aren't good at, which could mean fewer reach blocks and more in-line tight end use.

"There's schematic changes," he said. "We spent a bunch of time up until this point going back through some things. We've made some changes I feel very good about. But the other thing, too, is our running backs got to get better. It's as simple as that, and our running blocking unit needs to improve, too.

"Aaron does an excellent job of keeping us in favorable situations to run the football, and we need to produce better. It's not one guy. It's not one position. It's something that we've got to do a better job of and I feel like that the changes that we made will play to the strengths better than they have in the past."

McCarthy remains sensitive to claims that he still runs a zone-blocking system, insisting the Packers don't block gaps much anymore and use more pulling concepts in their run scheme. He insists that his plan is to make the team better at lining up and running the ball even when the defense knows it's going to run.

Much of McCarthy's system features an option system controlled by Rodgers, who can change the direction of the run or change the play from pass to run or vice versa. It appears there are times McCarthy wants things simpler for all involved.

"The ability to change things at the line of scrimmage is a strength of ours," McCarthy said. "The side of that and the most important side of that is there's sometimes you've just got to line up and run the ball, it doesn't matter who the hell's in there.

"We've got to do a better job of that in our run game. That's probably the part I'm disappointed in, particularly when we've just go to line up and go run the football."

With that, McCarthy wants more consistency in the backfield. He grew tired of having four or five backs carrying the load and would like to see that number down to two. But if Starks can't stay healthy and Green is still feeling the effects of a torn ACL suffered in 2011, he's going to need somebody else to team up with Harris.

That's where the draft comes in. It's hard to imagine general manager Ted Thompson not adding a back in April.

"Not that we're just going to try to stay with one but you'd like to get into a one-two punch deal and maybe get some more rhythm and let guys build off last week's performance and adjust to how the defense is playing week in and week out based on what you did the week before," McCarthy said. "We've got excellent defensive coaches across this league, particularly in our division.

"If you do something Week 1 and 2 and you play them in Week 3, they're going to have something to take that away from you. It really helps if you're doing it with the same players."