In his weekly radio appearance, Jerry Jones suggested that coaches performing on expiring contracts are incentivized to perform better.
DALLAS — It was interesting to listen to the football general manager — who will keep his position with the Cowboys in perpetuity regardless of performance — suggest that having the head coach and his staff perform on expiring contracts creates incentives and frequently leads to success.
It is either ironic or hypocritical. Maybe both.
“I think in regular life, away from coaching, you have most of us that operate without a guaranteed contract for next year,’’ Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said during his weekly appearance on 105.3 The Fan. “That, to me, I’ve seen people do better as well when they don’t have a contract.”
After the embarrassing home playoff failure against the Packers, Jones decided not to extend head coach Mike McCarthy’s contract, forcing the former Super Bowl-winning coach and his staff to work on expiring contracts. That almost never happens to coaches of McCarthy’s stature.
But Jones had previous experience with that tactic. He did the same twice to Jason Garrett. Once, it resulted in success and Garrett was signed to an extension. The other time, it failed and resulted in Jones hiring McCarthy.
McCarthy has consistently described the situation forced on him as a hardship for the coaches, more for his assistants than for himself because he’s established in the profession.
“Yeah, it’s going to be stressful, to be honest with you,” special teams coach John Fassel said. “When the game ends and the Cowboys win Sunday night, the first thing everybody’s going to be thinking is, ‘Well, I wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow.’ … I think we all want to be here, and we all get along really good. And I think we’re all good at what we do.”
It can be easily argued McCarthy and his coaches have performed more capably in their roles than Jones has as the general manager. The talent and depth on the roster are probably more responsible for the Cowboys enduring only their fourth losing season in the past 20 years.
The Cowboys front office has never been proactive in signing their players, and Jones has been especially delinquent with his best players. CeeDee Lamb, Zack Martin and Ezekiel Elliott have all engaged in holdouts before eventually reaching agreements, the end result typically being the team losing the negotiation.
The most obvious was Dak Prescott’s negotiation that culminated with him becoming the highest-paid player in NFL history and signing his contract a few hours before the season-opener in Cleveland.
Perhaps a season that began with Prescott finally agreeing to his contract extension on the first game d ay of the season will end with McCarthy doing the same on the final game day, but since sources say there have been no negotiations yet, that doesn’t appear that’s likely at the moment.
“I need to make sure I’m doing exactly what I’m asking everyone else to do. We need to finish the race,” McCarthy said when asked if he’d like to remain in Dallas. “It’s been a challenging year, based on our contract situation for coaches. It’s stating the obvious, but we’ll have time to talk about that next week.”
The Cowboys are 7-9 and resigned to a third-place finish in the NFC East, a division that has had a different winner every season for 20 years. McCarthy began the season with a roster that didn’t have much of a chance and was further decimated by injuries.
“It’s going to be a very difficult next couple of years,’’ Parsons said.
The two teams ahead of the Cowboys improved their rosters at the expense of the other two teams in the division. The Eagles have former Dallas offensive coordinator Kellen Moore calling plays and signed NFL rushing champion Saquon Barkley from the Giants. The Commanders took Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn and made him the head coach and then signed pass-rushers Dorance Armstrong and Dante Flower and center Tyler Biadasz.
The Cowboys also declined to fully participate in free agency even while losing as many as six starting players from the team eliminated by the Packers. They have been the last team to sign a veteran free agent in three of the past four years.
The Eagles, who dethroned the Cowboys as NFC East champions and swept them this season for the first time since 2011 by a cumulative score of 75-13, have embraced the opposite philosophy.
They are among the most proactive teams in the league in signing their top players and have invested significantly in veteran free agents, including NFL rushing champion Saquon Barkley and linebacker Zack Baun. A starting linebacker, Baun is the only player in NFL history with 150 or more tackles and at least five forced fumbles in a season.
Here are the players Philadelphia GM Howie Roseman signed this offseason, both extending veterans and free agents: WR AJ Brown (3-years, $96M), WR DeVonta Smith (3-years, $75M), OT Jordan Mailata (3-years, $66M), OL Landon Dickerson: (4-years, $84M), RB Saquon Barkley (3-years, $37.75M), DE Bryce Huff (3-years, $51.1M), DB Chauncey Gardner-Johnson (3-years, $27M).
“They’re at a time where they’re paying their quarterback now,’’ Jones said on the radio. “They’ve really spent some money to put this team together, and they’ve spent some cap. This is a good time for them to hit it because they have a lot invested in this team.
“I for sure make comparisons with the cap status [of other teams] around the league with where they’ve got room to grow the cap. I do that all the time. I observe every club very carefully,” Jones added. “I obviously look that over and apply it to us and where we spend our money.’’
The Cowboys’ most noteworthy veteran free agent was linebacker Eric Kendricks. They belatedly signed Prescott and Lamb, who missed all of training camp awaiting his contract.
If Micah Parsons and DaRon Bland played for the Eagles, they would arguably be signed already based on that team’s philosophy.
It is unacceptable in the NFL for coaches to cite injuries as being responsible for failure. But the reality is the Cowboys have about $90 million of salary cap space on injured reserve with Prescott, Lamb, Martin, DeMarcus Lawrence and Trevon Diggs all being lost during the season.
So McCarthy concludes just the fifth losing season of his 18-year NFL head coaching career. Two of those losing seasons have come with the Cowboys, both marked by Prescott missing significant time due to leg injuries that required surgery.
Now the general manager who can’t be fired must determine the fate of the head coach who could be allowed to leave.
McCarthy could also make the decision himself, although my sense is that he prefers to remain in Dallas. But it appears Jones is willing to allow his contract to expire, enabling McCarthy to determine whether he has any other more appealing options.
Throughout this often frustrating season, McCarthy has appeared confident in what he has accomplished in his career. Not many have coached three different franchises, but McCarthy seems convinced he could be among them if necessary.
He believes in the program and the culture he’s created in his five seasons with the Cowboys.
“We do things the right way,’’ he said this week. “I can attest to that. I’ve done this long enough to have a strong opinion [on] how to run a program, what’s best for the players, [how] the players are coached. They’re coached with detail. There’s demand there. Accountability. So the basics are in place.”
“But we’re like any other program; we need to get better,” McCarthy added. “There’s a number of areas we need to improve on. but that’s what the offseason is for. This is not the week to be getting into these discussions. But I think it’s really a reflection of what we have here in place. We have a coaching operation. We have a locker room. We have things within our realm that you need to win and we had a number of challenges this year and we didn’t overcome them all. And that’s why I’m standing here talking about not being in the playoffs.”
“I think the future is bright and we have a lot of things in place here. We need to take a step back after next week and obviously a lot of decisions got to be made, a lot of business decisions got to be made because of our contract situation, and that’s what we’ll do.”
McCarthy appreciates that the most prominent players have been outspoken about their support for his return. But if Jones didn’t listen to Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith’s opinions on Jimmy Johnson, he’s probably not going to be persuaded by Prescott, Lamb or Parsons.
Jones knows well how to create mystery and make himself the center of media attention. The decision he makes on McCarthy could determine whether the Cowboys become champions again at any point in his lifetime. However, Jones doesn’t need to change coaches as much as he needs to change his philosophy and the way he operates.