The Dallas Cowboys have a week and change left in their 2024 season which means two weeks from now the first handful of days of the offseason will have passed. Conventional wisdom would suggest that by the time the Wild Card Round kicks off, the Cowboys will have made a decision about head coach Mike McCarthy (even though they did not make a formal one about his predecessor until during the Wild Card Round).
Reports continue to swirl, as they did early in the week, that Mike McCarthy will return to the Cowboys in 2025 despite a horrific start to this season. The start was so irrecoverable that Dallas was formally eliminated from playoff contention prior to their Week 16 game kicking off.
We have discussed McCarthy’s case many times and obviously some Cowboys fans are ready to move on. McCarthy was hired to take the Cowboys to a different level and the reality is that he has not done that. He is, and always will be, a Super Bowl-winning coach based on his accomplishments with the Green Bay Packers which obviously pre-dated his time with Dallas.
Maybe that matters to you. Perhaps it does not. Ultimately the question is does it matter to somebody, and that somebody may not even need to be Jerry Jones.
The Athletic’s Dianna Russini made an appearance on The Herd this week and noted that she is hearing reports from around the league that McCarthy will be safe. Perhaps most notably, Russini noted that McCarthy will have suitors if Dallas dismisses him.
“Before you make a move at the head coaching position you first take a look at who’s available. Right? So when you take a look around the league and you try to figure out... who would Jerry Jones want to work with? Is there a coach out there who makes a lot of sense for the Dallas Cowboys? And then I think that’s where you get your answer.”
“So your gut is that he sticks with McCarthy. And I can tell you people in the Dallas building, that work under Jerry Jones, claim they have no idea what they want to do there. And I just saw Stephen Jones recently and I asked him directly... what’s the plan? And he said we’ve got to take a look at the entire body of work here. My response to that was, haven’t you seen enough? But they really want to see how this thing finishes out.”
“And every single week I hear more and more coming out of Jerry’s mouth that tells you that he believes that Mike McCarthy can get this thing right. I can just tell you though what people around the league are saying... they think Mike McCarthy’s going to be safe. We’ll see what happens when this thing wraps up. But considering, what, a month and a half ago I was on this show talking to you about this... I assumed that this would be it.”
“I thought that this was it for Mike McCarthy. They weren’t winning, he seems lost. And now they’re surging. And as Greg Cosell pointed out, their offense is clicking. So why are you going to move on to a guy who’s won this many games for you? Perhaps maybe not in the big dance, but he’s got all the right things.”
“And I can tell you if Mike McCarthy were to get, dismissed we’ll call it. There will be teams interested in bringing Mike McCarthy in for an interview. I can tell you that. I’ve had some conversations with teams around the league.”
We still have some time before the offseason officially begins for the non-playoff teams, but there are already at least three who will be in the market for a new head coach: New York Jets, New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears. It is fair to assume that list will grow.
Could Mike McCarthy be the top option for someone else? Would someone view him in a way that some Cowboys fans are not? McCarthy’s predecessor was nowhere near as accomplished as him, but Jason Garrett did ultimately find another job; however, it was as an offensive coordinator position and not a head coaching one.