Mike McCarthy‘s second season in Dallas could be his last unless his team is able to put together a playoff run. Adam H. Beasley of ProFootballNetwork.com reports that McCarthy’s Cowboys may need to make it to the NFC Championship Game if the head coach wants to keep his job.
As Beasley explains, Jerry Jones will soon be 79, and the owner is unwilling to show as much patience as he did with former head coach Jason Garrett. The Cowboys’ 6-10 record in 2020 left a lot to be desired, and while that record was obviously impacted by Dak Prescott‘s injury, another disappointing campaign could spell the end of McCarthy’s tenure in Dallas. If the Cowboys do underachieve, Jones may be ready to start over with a new head coach as he pursues that elusive championship.
Further, Beasley notes that some within the organization are “a bit dubious” about McCarthy’s coaching staff hires. The head coach has brought in four former Packers staffers (Joe Philbin, Joe Whitt Jr., Jeff Blasko, and Scott McCurley) since he’s been in Dallas, and the writer implies that some within the organization have been less than thrilled with the additions.
McCarthy has already slightly revamped his coaching staff in anticipation of the 2021 season. This past offseason, the team let go of defensive coordinator Mike Nolan and replaced him with former Falcons head coach Dan Quinn. McCarthy will surely be hoping that the coaching change (coupled with Prescott’s return and the team’s offseason acquisitions) will change the team’s fortunes…and help him keep his job.
Jerry threw away HoF’ers Jimmy & Bill as HC’s. Refuses to hire a real scout team & demands to be 100% involved in everything.
What good to great HC wants that interference?
Those moves were bad, but Jones seems to have mellowed out a bit since then. Not to mention Stephen is running a lot more now that Jerry wanted to back then. So the current version of the Cowboys is a bit different in my opinion than their 90s-2000s iteration. I think Jerry is less involved now than he was then, which is a positive. I don’t think he’s as meddlesome as David Tepper or Dan Snyder, for instance.
I don’t know because I’m not there, but I think it would behoove him to not continue to pretend that the Cowboys are a wholesome family of the most popular football players in America. It’s time to push into the playoffs and earn the reputation he wants them to have.
Outside their division the Cowboys managed to beat 3 cellar dwellers and a bad Vikings team. Even with a soft schedule this season, a playoff appearance looks unlikely.
We didn’t have our QB
Or our pro bowl LT
Or our pro bowl RT
Or our swing tackle
Or our C
Or our All Pro G
You get the idea
How did Mahomes look in the SB without his top two tackles?
Or
He looked like he was in the Super Bowl, somewhere the Cowboys haven’t been in a quarter century.
Witty. Mahomes looked like he was a deer in the headlights. 0 TDs, 2 INTs, 49.9 QBR. Deer district
Mahomes was hurt in the super bowl, smoothbrain
‘a playoff appearance looks unlikely’
They play in the NFC East. I’m a Giants fan, but imo the Cowboys are the team to beat. I have zero confidence in WFT, the Giants, or the Eagles. I have a little confidence in the Cowboys with Dak.
Golladay and Rudolph were solid acquisitions by the Giants who are improving. Washington will likely repeat as division winners. Cowboys and Eagles still trying to figure out how everything fell apart so fast.
Injuries. Lack of depth. Wishing car insurance salesman can compete against NFL wide receivers at corner. Did I miss anything? Did I get the job?
If you can’t win this toilet of a division,you should be fired.
They’ll make the playoffs.
The Giants didn’t do enough on defense to pose a threat and their QB isn’t a Dak Prescott, Washington is all defense and no offense and Philadelphia just plain stinks, so they’ll make it by default, more or less.
What they do once they get in depends on how much that defense improves during the season because the offense is top 3 in the NFC!
This guy brings nothing to the table as a HC. Couldn’t win more than 1 ring with the best QB of the generation.
Rodgers hasn’t exactly won a bunch of titles without him either sooo…
McCarthy was overrated, but Rodgers always gets a pass instead of the blame…He had a bad defense, he didn’t have a running game, his coach was mediocre, etc..THE BEST OF ALL TIME find ways to control their own outcomes..Montana, Young, Brady, Manning…They don’t get outplayed by Alex Smith, Colin Kaepernick, or other lesser QBs over and over again…
Yeah, but it’s never Aaron’s fault! Didn’t you get the memo???
Rodgers has consistently outplayed all of those QBs in any advanced statistical category you can name. Unless “finding a way to win” means jumping ship to a team loaded with All-Pros and a ferocious defense, then QBs should be held accountable for their own play and not the organizational failure of the team itself. The “finding a way to win” is the biggest cop-out in sports, aside from the “they just wanted it more” idiocy that some people spew.
Come on. Do you think Rodgers would have not won a ring with Tampa last year? The guy who outplayed every other player in the league? That’s not enough to win? I’ll give you a little statistic: Brady has never won a Super Bowl with anything less than a top five defense. In fairness to him, almost no QB has. But he has seven rings to his name, and there’s a common denominator there: he had a team. He had a good coach, a good defense, and didn’t have to drag his team to the playoffs on his own every year. That’s the difference between a perennial Super Bowl winner and a perennial MVP winner-the team around them.
Unless you’re sticking to your logic, which would consider Brad Johnson, Trent Dilfer, Joe Flacco, and even Eli Manning as good as Rodgers. Or Favre. Or Brees. And Marino, who must have not been great at all. The Packers have continuously failed-for over thirty years-to consistently build teams that could win championships. Without their QB play, they’d be afterthoughts. The “finding a way to win” stuff is just willfully ignoring relevant information because it’s just too complicated to bother. It’s just lazy. The truth is this: if Rodgers, like so many other greats, had top five defenses more consistently, he’d have more rings. And if his inept GM had bothered to add a quality receiver in either of the last two years, they’d have had a significantly better chance at winning the NFCC last year.
Well stated….
Jerry needs to make himself head coach
I like this idea
Why doesnt dallas just trade Dak for Rodgers? Makes total sense for both sides and they make the same salary!
Dak, 27 years old, Aaron, 37 years old…
He’s a “highly successful football coach”
Nobody that is respected would take that job. That is why Ole Jerra has hung onto the has been head coaches. Nobody with a brain would take that job and put up with his BS.
I really thought McCarthy knew what he was doing. I was wrong. Last year’s debacle was as much about the ability of the coaching staff as it was about injuries.
The Cowboys need to find people who know what they are doing.
Packer fan here. Glad we got rid of McCarthy. He wouldn’t adapt to the changing game on offense plus he kept bad assistant coaches around too long.
Agreed. McCarthy can draw up plays and has had experience leading a team, but he is too unwilling to adapt to foreign concepts and is too attached to demonstratively ineffective ones.
His one biggest mistake was changing the Dallas defensive scheme to the completely opposite base 3-4. That was going to be a disaster, no matter who was in charge. It was especially stupid given how good Dallas’ 4-3 zone was at the time. It reminded me of Buffalo’s hiring Rex Ryan some years back, despite Rex being committed to a multiple 3-4 base and the Bills having a truly elite 4-3 Jim Schwartz built zone. Ryan eventually got them to midway average, but it took four years and undermined team success a lot, and that was from a coach who was regarded as a good defensive mind. McCarthy certainly is not. Quinn? Ehh, I’m not so sure. Honestly Nolan has a more varied list of success than Quinn does, and the defense did show some improvement late in the season. I don’t expect much success in this scheme with their current players. McCarthy should have left it as is, especially given his specialization on the offensive side of the ball.