DALLAS -- With some teams having played nine games and others eight, the NFL reached the closest thing a 17-game schedule can offer to the halfway mark this weekend. The NFC East is a two-team race. The defending champions of the division have not been invited.
After three consecutive 12-5 seasons, the fact that Dallas hit this stage with a 3-5 record, much closer to New York in the basement of the division than to Washington at the penthouse, seems like midseason firing stuff for Mike McCarthy to many fans and viewers. He has not exactly distinguished himself this season while calling plays for a team that ranks 31st in rushing, 20th in points scored while consistently committing egregious penalties at the worst of times.
On Sunday, McCarthy even fired his tablet to the ground, a Moses-like gesture and you wondered if this particular one was personalized with commandments such as "Thou shalt not kill drives with false starts" and "Love thy neighbor but feel free to tackle him on occasion."
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones gave McCarthy the customary vote of confidence Sunday, saying "I like his football mind" which means the head coach was allowed to fly home from Atlanta and search for a game plan to compete with Philadelphia Sunday. I think this is different from when Wade Phillips was fired at the eight-game mark in 2010. That Cowboys' team, coming off a playoff victory over the Eagles, was 1-7 and had just lost to Green Bay by 38 points.
See. The worst Mike's team has done is lose to Detroit by 37.
The major difference between now and 2010 is that, at the time, Jones had a head coaching candidate on the staff he dearly loved. Oh, did he love him. Jason Garrett got 9 1/2 seasons at the helm to produce two playoff wins before he was cast aside for a coach who had actually won a Super Bowl. Maybe someone who could win a Lombardi Trophy in Arlington could bring one there, Jones figured.
There is no one on McCarthy's staff to elevate. John Fassel and his little bag of special teams tricks needs to be kept under wraps, not promoted. And Mike Zimmer has been a disaster in turning a big play defense into one that ranks 26th in yards allowed and 31st in points per game. That includes a 32nd ranking in yards after catch as receivers always run free against the Dallas secondary.
I don't see any point in doing anything other than letting McCarthy and his lame duck staff finish the season (and their contracts). What's the point in making a change now? Heaven forbid somebody finds a way to spark an indifferent locker room and the Cowboys get to 8-9 and suddenly you feel compelled to keep him as head coach instead of searching for the best.
And you know the best of all time remains available even if one can question how many years Bill Belichick has left. All I know is that 24-year-old girlfriends are hard to impress with podcast and betting commercials, so I feel certain Bill will be coaching somewhere in the NFL in 2025.
But keeping McCarthy on after last year's Green Bay disaster was Jerry's first real mistake (for the 2024 season, anyway). After playoff losses to San Francisco twice and Green Bay, not to mention a postseason loss to the LA Rams in Garrett's final playoff game, it was readily apparent this team had no clue how to prepare for West Coast offenses of the Shanahan/McVay variety. They get beat by them constantly, and that shouldn't have been laid entirely at the feet of Dan Quinn. The veteran head coach is supposed to know something about these things, too.
Regardless, I couldn't imagine Jerry bringing McCarthy back after the 48-32 loss and he did, with no guarantees for the future. Just think about the message you send to a locker room. It's opening day in Cleveland, and hours before kickoff, Dak Prescott signs for the single biggest guarantee ($231 million) in history. That's without any playoff success to speak of. And CeeDee Lamb has just become the second highest paid wide receiver in history. Meanwhile, the coach and his staff twist in the wind on the final year of their deals.
Jones has never, in 36 years, appreciated the authority a head coach needs to wield, harder than ever in an era of guaranteed money for players. All he really understands is he didn't enjoy working with Jimmy Johnson or Bill Parcells after a few seasons, so he gives Cowboys fans Gaily and Campo and Garrett and McCarthy.
Cutting his coaches' authority down to nothing, allowing Lamb to miss the entire offseason and failing to even entertain helping the running game with a third-day draft pick -- all of this after allowing key linemen on both sides of the ball plus Tony Pollard to walk as free agents -- set the Cowboys up for disaster. I picked Dallas to go 8-8-1. The team will need a Hail Mary to get there.
"All in" never meant what fans hoped it meant. It only told us that Jones was all in on sweeping changes (but never at quarterback) if a team whose chances had been strapped into a Jerry strait jacket didn't find a way to escape.
McCarthy never did. Although he sold himself to the Cowboys as some kind of reinvented new-age coach after being canned in Green Bay, he runs a vanilla offense that is predictable enough to fail at four straight fourth-down conversions Sunday in Atlanta.
Let McCarthy finish out a bad season which could get messier if Lamb or Prescott miss games. Then start fresh, and fire up that fan base one more time with a new coach. But just remember the guy who willingly turned a playoff team into something that appears bound for 6-11 is still the one in charge for the next cycle.
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