Here’s to having a resolution on Mike McCarthy sooner rather than later.
The Cowboys have one game left in the 2024 season and it means just about nothing. The Commanders will be playing their starters as they could see an improvement in playoff seeding with a win on Sunday, but that’s about it.
The Cowboys could opt to play some of their backups, notably Trey Lance, in this one. No firm announcements have been made regarding Lance or anyone else for this game, but whatever happens it will likely be a very forgettable exhibition for Dallas. Except, of course, for the potential that this is the last time we see Mike McCarthy stalk the sidelines of AT&T Stadium.
It’s been a talking point all year long, but in a few days we will finally get an actual decision – one way or the other – on the head coach and his expiring contract. With that in mind, our own David Howman and Tom Ryle tackle, once and for all, the most frequently posed question: should the Cowboys keep McCarthy, or let him walk?
David: My answer will surprise no one as I’ve remained consistent on this position all year long. Mike McCarthy should be given a contract extension as soon as possible, and even then it will be a whole year too late. Letting a coach go into a lame duck season is never a smart idea, yet Dallas has now done it three times in the last decade.
Despite being a lame duck, and despite losing just about every impact player to injury for at least a few weeks at a time, McCarthy has kept this team afloat. Just when the team looked like it was about to collapse after Dak Prescott was lost for the year, the Cowboys won four out of five and, realistically, should’ve won five straight.
The players were battling for McCarthy, and an ever-growing list of them have come out publicly to endorse him. Ditto for Mike Zimmer. I don’t understand how you can look at the way this team plays for their head coach and think the right move is to hold the door open for him on the way out.
Tom: I do agree that McCarthy has done a good job the past few weeks, but that rather overlooks the fact that the season was pretty much lost already. Yes, there were injuries, and the lack of depth is not his fault, but the team played dazed and confused for almost three months, and that is on him as well.
There are additional problems. The offense still can look stale and predictable at times, and clock management is often baffling. But I believe there are other reasons that he is not coming back, centering around the ownership.
There’s no doubt Jerry Jones pays attention to what is said in the media. And it probably galls him to keep being blamed for the state of the franchise, no matter how accurate the assessment. McCarthy is the prime candidate to take the fall for this season. For whatever reason, it always looked like he was being set up for failure, although that may just have been a symptom of the lack of aggressiveness that has plagued offseasons in Dallas for years. Still, Jerry isn’t going to fire himself, and it may be too hard to stick with McCarthy and take some heated criticisms. Firing the head coach looks like the owner and GM is doing something, even if it is more illusory than anything.
David: If that ends up happening, though, the Cowboys will be tasked with finding a new head coach. That brings the question of who even wants this job at this point. Everyone saw the way McCarthy was set up to fail, then saw the way he rallied his team and how much all of his players lobbied for him to stay.
No coach wants to walk into a job where 1) their boss isn’t going to support them, and 2) all of the players wish the last guy was still around. On top of that, the expectations in Dallas are always sky high, whether that’s realistic or not.
Let’s be real: Ben Johnson isn’t coming here. All reports indicate he’s very interested in the Bears job, but also that Johnson wants to bring his own GM with him. That isn’t happening in Dallas. Mike Vrabel had a lot of roster control in Tennessee, and will likely want the same in his next job. All signs point to him being the most coveted candidate this cycle, after the choosy Johnson, so you have to figure Vrabel finds a job elsewhere that gives him the control he seeks.
So who is a realistic target, then? You’re pretty much left with a bunch of first-timers, whether it be Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik or Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen or Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn. The Cowboys haven’t hired a head coach without prior head coaching experience since Dave Campo, and that’s for a reason.
Letting McCarthy and Zimmer go would already be horrible for the locker room, but the prospect of replacing them with a good coach that can actually succeed is just another point in favor of keeping the current staff together. I’m not sure there’s a clear upgrade out there, and I think Jerry will see it the same way.
Tom: Your argument is logical, although this isn’t really about logic. I agree that the luster is off the Dallas head coaching job. But there are a bunch of head coaches who are about to be fired, or already have been, and I have complete faith in Jerry’s ability to convince himself one of them would work just fine. Heck, there are some broadcasters who might not mind taking another crack at things. Having been away from the game could even make them less concerned with Jerry’s, um, eccentricities.
Something else to keep in mind is that bringing McCarthy back would be basically doing the same thing for another year and expecting a different outcome. We’ve all heard that old saying. I’ll concede that the coaching may not have been the real problem in 2024. That leaves us with the roster, which I think was the major issue. Player acquisition and retention is very much Jerry’s area of control. We saw how a lack of depth and trying to rebuild on the fly worked out. The huge cap hits for Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb are still going to be a drag on a team that already leans way too much into the slow and easy approach for roster building.
Which kind of leads us to a depressing thought. Maybe this is the best it’s going to get. It is very, very hard to be the head coach for the Cowboys because a huge part of the job is managing Jerry Jones, and without being too obvious about it. McCarthy should at least be able to make the team relevant again. Anything beyond that might just be a pipe dream for us, perhaps for decades to come.
David: At the end of the day, this is all about the pursuit of another Super Bowl. Well, you can’t win a Super Bowl without first making the playoffs. If we’re talking about the best way to win the Super Bowl, it starts with making sure you’re in the postseason consistently. This is about shots on goal: the more chances you have in the postseason, the higher the odds that one day you’ll find the right combination of talent and luck and go all the way.
Few coaches go to the playoffs as consistently as McCarthy. Among active head coaches, McCarthy is third in career wins. Not by coincidence, only Andy Reid has more playoff appearances. And, yes, McCarthy has missed the playoffs twice in Dallas. But both seasons saw Dak Prescott go down for the year, as well as some rather unusual extenuating circumstances (the pandemic-shortened offseason in 2020, the whole lame duck storyline in 2024).
In between there, McCarthy became the first Cowboys coach since Barry Switzer to have three straight playoff appearances. Switzer was also the last coach to hoist a Lombardi trophy for the team.
It’s all really simple. McCarthy wins and he knows how to get the Cowboys to the playoffs, even with all the extracurriculars going on around this team. The players also love him and play hard for him. Could Jerry find another coach who does those things just as well? Maybe! But it’s far from a guarantee that he will.
So, yes, sticking with the same approach and trying again is the best option. Andy Reid didn’t reach the conference championship game until his sixth year in Kansas City; Sean McDermott has a losing record in the playoffs in his seven seasons with the Bills; even Kyle Shanahan had a career losing record after five years with the 49ers.
Sometimes patience is a virtue, especially when trying to do something as hard as winning a Super Bowl.
