Jerry Jones will soon have to acknowledge that Mike McCarthy is not the best coach for the Cowboys.
When Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, hired Mike McCarthy in January 2020, one has to wonder what he was thinking.
On the surface, McCarthy was a seasoned play-caller and head coach who had won a Super Bowl. He was head coach of the Green Bay Packers when they won Super Bowl XLV and he was also a part of two MVP seasons for quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
On paper, it makes perfect sense to bring in a coach who helped develop an MVP quarterback and won a Super Bowl. Jones probably believed McCarthy could duplicate the success he had with the Packers after seeing a squad that included a quarterback, Dak Prescott, whom he believed had the potential to be an MVP. In addition, McCarthy was a “throwback” to the traditional football coach of the past, a Pittsburgh native at heart, at a time when younger coaches like Sean McVay and Zac Taylor were gaining popularity. Maybe that’s why Jones was drawn to McCarthy.
So, in theory, he made sense as head coach.
Never mind the fact that he was fired by the Packers, a notoriously conservative and slow-moving organization, after Week 13 of the 2017 season. He didn’t even get a chance to finish that season out after an uninspiring home loss to a bad Arizona Cardinals team. Never mind the fact that his record at that time was 4-7-1 and the season before that he was 7-9. Never mind the multiple times the Packers came up short in the playoffs despite arguably having the most talented team not named the New England Patriots of the decade. Remember when the Packers went 15-1 in 2011? They were the best NFL team in recent memory at that time and they didn’t even win one game in the playoffs.
That was the McCarthy experience post Super Bowl XLV, so when McCarthy was hired by Jones in 2020, the results ever since have been somewhat predictable.
Mike McCarthy’s Cowboys teams have been underwhelming
In 2021, the Cowboys fell in the Wild Card round to the San Francisco 49ers in a game in which they lost 23-17 but had the ball with a chance to win on the final drive. Prescott spiked the ball to stop the clock after it had hit zeros and the Cowboys never got a chance to try for the end zone.
In 2022, the Cowboys lost in the Divisional Round to the 49ers, 19-12. Dallas once again had the ball at the end of the game with a chance to win it but Prescott threw an eight-yard pass on third-and-10 from the Dallas 24 with no timeouts remaining. The Cowboys again didn’t have a chance to go for the endzone.
If there was any consolation for Dallas fans in 2023 it was that the game wasn’t even close. The young and upstart Packers jumped on a much more talented Cowboys team early in the Wild Card game and won, 48-32 in Dallas. Green Bay was up 27-7 at halftime.
In three playoffs in a row, McCarthy failed to help his team execute in the biggest moments.
Now? Heading into the 2024 season despite knowing that his job was likely on the line, Dallas entered Week 9 against the Atlanta Falcons with a 3-4 record and a healthy(ish) Prescott.
Flash forward to Week 11 and Prescott is out for the season and any magic that was left in Cooper Rush appears to be gone. Rush completed 13-of-23 passes against the Philadelphia Eagles for only 45 yards. Sure, he’s a backup, but only 45 yards from an NFL quarterback is an absolute disaster class, and that goes straight on McCarthy — who at one point was considered an offensive mastermind.
Those days have long come and gone, though, as the game was already getting away from McCarthy in his final seasons with Rodgers in Green Bay. There’s absolutely no chance of an offensive turnaround for the rest of this Cowboys’ season with Rush or even Trey Lance (who threw an interception against the Eagles) under center. But even when Prescott was available, it’s not as if he and McCarthy were doing anything special offensively. Prescott finishes 2024 with 1,978 yards and 11 touchdowns with eight interceptions.
Yes, he’s regressed and hasn’t lived up to the four-year, $240 million contract Jones gave him before this season kicked off, but regression is a staple of McCarthy teams. It happened with a four-time MVP and future Hall of Famer in Green Bay. Everyone not named Jerry Jones knew it would happen in Dallas as well.
Yet, for some reason, he hired McCarthy.
Now, Jones needs to fire McCarthy before this 2024 season ends. It’s not going to change anything and it’s certainly not going to change the disappointment the fans feel. But Jones needs to at least prove that there’s still some kind of standard in Dallas and hold this coaching staff and team accountable for not meeting that standard.
Or, perhaps that standard no longer exists, but that would be a sad realization for the franchise once known to boast “America’s Team”.
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