Mike McCarthy’s old Dallas Cowboys staff is now sprinkled across the NFL in high-ranking positions.
You may recall that when Mike McCarthy first took over the Dallas Cowboys that his staff featured plenty of people who had been head coaches before. Mike Nolan had been the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and McCarthy actually worked on his staff. Jim Tomsula, the defensive line coach, had also been the skipper for San Francisco, albeit for a brief cup of coffee.
John Fassel joined as special teams coordinator, and while he had never been a head coach before, he did serve as the interim head coach for the Los Angeles Rams in their first season back in L.A. when they fired Jeff Fisher before the season was over. The overall point is that there was a lot of leadership on that staff.
Obviously things didn’t fully materialize for that McCarthy staff (or any one for that matter), but interestingly a recent iteration of it is now spread across today’s NFL in all sorts of leadership positions.
Mike McCarthy’s old Cowboys staff had several current head coaches and coordinators
A common theme when coaches leave for promotions elsewhere is for them to bring people with them. Consider how McCarthy brought some people from his time in Green Bay and even Nolan from a previous stop.
It was a year ago when Dan Quinn left his post as the Cowboys defensive coordinator to become the head coach for the Washington Commanders. He took several staffers (and players) with him and chief among them was Joe Whitt Jr. who became his defensive coordinator.
McCarthy’s Cowboys moved on from offensive coordinator Kellen Moore after the 2022 season and he would go on to hold that same role for the Los Angeles Chargers in 2023 and then ultimately the Philadelphia Eagles this past season where he was a part of the team that won the Super Bowl. Moore finally parlayed it all into a head coaching role as he is now running the New Orleans Saints, and recent reports suggest that Doug Nussmeier, another former Cowboys staffer, is the favorite to be his offensive coordinator.
Sounds like Doug Nussmeier is the favorite to be the Saints offensive coordinator, I’m told. Not done yet, but things are moving in that direction.
— Nick Underhill (@nick_underhill) February 18, 2025
Quinn, Whitt, Moore and Nussmeier make for four former Cowboys staffers that now hold head coach or coordinator positions which is a high figure for one group that Mike McCarthy oversaw in his time as the Cowboys head coach. There is also the matter of the current Cowboys head coach in Brian Schottenheimer who was also a part of the group.
Schottenheimer joined the Cowboys in 2022 when all four of the people we have mentioned so far were also a part of the team. Think about that singular group.
2022 Dallas Cowboys staffers who are now head coaches or coordinators
- Brian Schottenheimer, coaching analyst (Dallas Cowboys head coach)
- Kellen Moore, offensive coordinator (New Orleans Saints head coach)
- Doug Nussmeier, quarterbacks coach (expected New Orleans Saints offensive coordinator)
- Dan Quinn, defensive coordinator (Washington Commanders head coach)
- Joe Whitt Jr., pass game coordinator/secondary (Washington Commanders defensive coordinator)
If you wanted to you could go a step further here and include the aforementioned Fassel as he is now the Tennessee Titans special teams coordinator, although that was the same position he held in Dallas and therefore it isn’t a promotion like the others.
Ultimately we are talking about five staffers who received serious promotions almost directly after leaving the Cowboys. That requires context clearly as Schottenheimer’s was within the organization, Whitt’s was as a part of joining Quinn’s staff and Moore’s took two more years to fully happen. It is still interesting, though.
What would you attribute all of that to? People talk so often about Mike Shanahan’s old staff in Washington and the number of future head coaches that it held and we can assign some level of credit to Shanahan for building the group. Do we give a similar sense of credit to McCarthy? Should we?
Or does the credit, for lack of a better word, belong to the players? Do Kellen Moore, Doug Nussmeir and Brian Schottenheimer all owe a debt of gratitude to Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb for elevating their statuses? Should Dan Quinn and Joe Whitt Jr. send Micah Parsons and Co. an edible arrangement? If we include Fassel, should he thank Brandon Aubrey and KaVontae Turpin?
It is certainly strange on some level that the Cowboys have failed (in terms of the overall goal) so much lately and did so with this entire group all working together and that something about them was deemed to be valuable enough in other instances. Sometimes things work out in a funny way like that.
Who knows what else that 2022 group will ultimately yield. For now, Quinn and Whitt have an NFC Championship Game appearance and Moore has a Super Bowl title.
