The McCarthy Chronicles: Cowboys can’t do any better than this

It wasn’t too long ago that everyone was certain the Cowboys would be looking for a new head coach after this year. Mike McCarthy’s contract expires once the season ends, and a losing streak that saw Dak Prescott go down for the year only escalated the odds of that happening.

Then the Cowboys won two straight, both of them against division foes, and momentum began to shift in the coach’s favor. Prescott made a rare media appearance to vouch for McCarthy and Stephen Jones admitted that the entire team feels the same way. Then, before the Monday night game kicked off against the Bengals, Troy Aikman added to the discourse:

As if the universe was playing a cosmic practical joke, the Cowboys immediately went on to lose in the most dumbfounding way possible. After the defense sacked Joe Burrow on third and long with two minutes left in the game and the score all tied up, Dallas blocked the punt and then foolishly tried to recover it, giving the ball right back to Cincinnati as a result.

The dire mental error in such a crucial moment immediately let the social media hounds loose on McCarthy, with fans calling for him to be fired and expressing regret over the apparent about-face of the internal sentiment on the coach.

There’s just one problem: the Cowboys can’t do any better than this.

That’s both in the short- and long-term, too. Just about everyone not named Jerry or Stephen agrees that the offseason strategies this year were not put together with winning in 2024 as the foremost priority. It’s not entirely surprising that the team stumbled early on, and it’s even less surprising that they got worse after Prescott went down.

Hope of a magical turnaround was extinguished several weeks ago, although the two-game win streak cracked the door open ever so slightly. This loss to the Bengals was a reminder, though, that the Cowboys in this current moment are not equipped to contend for the playoffs.

In the long run, though, the Cowboys have an uneasy future too. They have 11 starters with expiring contracts this year, and Micah Parsons will likely want a new contract before his fifth-year option officially kicks in. Following next year, the Cowboys will have contract decisions to make on DaRon Bland, Jake Ferguson, Donovan Wilson, Jalen Tolbert, Brandon Aubrey, and Terence Steele, among others.

They’re also already tied to Prescott and CeeDee Lamb for at least the next four years. On some level, that’s a good thing, but Prescott is already the longest-tenured starting quarterback in the league. He’ll already be entering next season coming off his season-ending injury, so adding a total scheme overhaul onto his plate would be unwise.

That’s what dumping McCarthy would mean: a new scheme, a new language, and an entirely different set of personnel requirements on offense. While many fans would be elated to ditch the Texas Coast offense after just two years, pulling off a scheme change is easier said than done. Finding the right coach to do it is an entirely different animal.

Many fans want Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, but that seems highly unlikely. The other two names most commonly associated with the potential vacancy are Bill Belichick and Mike Vrabel. As of the time of publication, Belichick is reportedly on the verge of taking the head coaching job at the University of North Carolina. But we’ll reference him here becasue he was a likely candidate until just recently, and it helps build out the context.

Belichick is a defensive mind whose track record on offense has been spotty, at least when he doesn’t have Tom Brady running the show. The same can be said of Vrabel, who went 13-21 after losing offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. In the six years that Vrabel coached the Titans, his offense was 13th in EPA/play and 14th in success rate; in that same span, the Cowboys are fifth and third, respectively.

The biggest knock on McCarthy is that he doesn’t win in the postseason. It’s a silly thing to say about a coach who has a Super Bowl ring to his name, but McCarthy is 1-3 in the playoffs in Dallas. Belichick and Vrabel have had their moments in the playoffs, though. Belichick obviously has six rings, while Vrabel’s second year with the Titans saw them reach the conference championship game.

Of course, neither coach has done much recently. Following that stellar 2019 year for the Titans, Vrabel went 0-2 in the playoffs and then failed to reach the postseason his next two years. Meanwhile, Belichick has just one playoff appearance since Brady left the Patriots, and he hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2018 season.

To put that in perspective, the last playoff win he had came at the end of a Super Bowl run that saw the Patriots beat Philip Rivers’ Chargers, Patrick Mahomes in just his second career playoff game, and a Rams team led by Jared Goff and Todd Gurley.

“But they’ve gotten farther in the playoffs than McCarthy has in Dallas,” some say. So did McCarthy when he took this job. McCarthy currently has the third-most wins among active head coaches and he’s tied for 13th most all time. Coincidentally, he’s tied Bill Parcells, another Super Bowl winning head coach who was unable to replicate his success in Dallas. If those two coaches couldn’t get it done under the watchful eye of Jerry Jones, what hope is there that Vrabel can?

Therein lies the central reason for keeping McCarthy. They had a run of consistency the last three years unlike any since the glory days of this franchise. They were painfully close all three years, but just couldn’t get it done. A coaching change likely resets the trajectory, but continuity with a coach the players love, and are fighting hard for, keeps the team around the rim, as Jones likes to say.

In other words, the Cowboys probably aren’t going to be any better than what they already are. They might as well roll the dice again with McCarthy and hope for a little better luck next time around.