From Mike McCarthy to the quality control crew, no one on Dallas’ staff is under contract beyond next season.
Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy leaves the field following their Wild Card Playoff loss to Green Bay Packers at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, January 14, 2024. The Cowboys lost, 48-32.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)
The report cards released recently by the NFLPA were interesting, to say the least. Especially the results for the world champions/Dallas expats. Clark Hunt got an F from his Chiefs! And not just an F, but an F-minus. Like it was personal. You’d think they’d at least give him points for his hair.
Clark’s Preston Road Trophy rival, Jerry Jones, got a B from his players. Certainly an easier grade than he’d have gotten from his coaches, who, according to a Dallas Morning News report, will be on a short leash this fall.
From Mike McCarthy to the quality control crew, no one is under contract beyond next season. Maybe this is what Jerry meant when he said he was “all in.” He’s pushed all his coaches to the center of the table.
The owner’s message to his staff is clear: Win or else.
The question is, how much winning will it take?
Judging by the shock waves from a first-round belly-flop against the Packers, it’ll require more than another 12-win season. Even if it means four in a row. If I’m McCarthy, I wouldn’t make any comparisons to the only era the Cowboys managed four straight years of at least a dozen wins, because it was decorated with three Lombardi Trophies.
Winning one playoff round won’t be good enough, either. Or shouldn’t be. The Cowboys beat Tom Brady in Tampa. Give them that much. Dak Prescott never looked better in that game.
Never looked worse the next.
The problem with McCarthy’s 12-win seasons isn’t just that each ended too soon. It’s the way they ended. Like Eddie the Eagle exiting a ski ramp.
In fairness, only one team ends the playoffs on an up note, which is why it seems like, you know, a good idea to go ahead and win it all, thus avoiding the annual gnashing of teeth.
Once it wouldn’t have seemed such an outrageous expectation. Been a minute since the Cowboys could so much as find a Super Bowl. Twenty-nine years, if you’ve lost count. For a little perspective, the Cowboys won all five Super Bowls in a span of 24 years, which comes to one every five years. Back in the day, you could raise a family of four on the promise that they’d have a pretty good idea of what a Lombardi looked like. My four adult kids wouldn’t know one from a Grammy.
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Had the Cowboys not won so often over those 24 years, earning America’s Team honors and winning the gate in a few opponents’ stadiums as a result, three straight 12-win seasons would look pretty good. Carolina would take it, right? The Panthers haven’t even had a winning season since 2017.
On the other hand, Carolina has been to the Super Bowl twice since Neil O’Donnell kept mistaking Larry Brown for one of his own. Counting Carolina, 21 organizations have been to the Super Bowl since the 1995 season, and 15 have been back at least once. The Rams have done it four times while working in two different cities.
Besides the Cowboys, do you know who hasn’t made it the last 29 years? Washington, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Minnesota, Detroit. The Chargers. The three-quarters of the AFC East that doesn’t include New England. Also the other team from Texas. Even at that, the Texans, who’ve only been around since 2002, get special dispensation.
Other than Buffalo, Minnesota and, of late, Miami and Detroit, the rest of the organizations in the paragraph above constitute a pretty sorry group to call company. But it’s what the Cowboys keep.
For far too long, they’ve coasted on a reputation they’ve failed to reinforce. This is what Michael Irvin was talking about in his viral rant. He may have his demons, but he knows his history.
“When I got here,” he said after the loss to the Packers, “I understood the men before me. They built the Dallas Cowboys. They made this America’s Team. They put a championship on the table before I got here.
“My job while I was here was to match what they have done because they built it.”
Over the last 29 years, the Cowboys haven’t come close to matching something Michael and his peers once considered not so much an expectation as an obligation.
Now, is it a little unfair to say this next team should finally make good on what so many predecessors failed to deliver? That’s a lot of pressure. Like the pressure Roger Staubach felt when the Cowboys were derisively crowned “Next Year’s Champions.” The pressure Marv Levy felt while losing four Super Bowls. The pressure Kyle Shanahan feels after losing two.
The pressure rightfully expected from a legacy of greatness.
Could the Cowboys really win it all next year? They have fewer excuses than most. The 36 regular-season wins over the last three years should stand for something.
But, no matter how high the expectations, it won’t take another Lombardi Trophy to save McCarthy’s job. He might not even have to make the NFC title game. The concept of “all in” doesn’t go as far as it used to.
These are not Michael’s Cowboys and maybe not even your parents’. They grade on a curve these days. Jerry should be thankful his customers didn’t get a vote.
