Since coming to Dallas five years ago, head coach Mike McCarthy has led the Cowboys to three 12-win seasons. Ed Werder breaks down why this season is different.
FRISCO, Texas — In an infamous but entirely truthful statement, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones set expectations for Dak Prescott that he probably knew would be impossible to achieve.
During the offseason, the owner said his quarterback would have to win more with less — more games with less talent on the roster. Although unspoken, the same exact terms applied to Mike McCarthy, except the quarterback received his contract extension while it now seems the coach likely never will.
Jones, who has an aversion to paying coaches not to work, has no financial investment in McCarthy or any member of his coaching staff beyond the current season. He deliberately created this situation to ensure he could make a change if he determined it was necessary.
McCarthy was not extended but not fired. He was permitted to work the final year of his contract to determine his own fate. Except that he had to do it with whatever roster GM Jones and the front office provided.
It was quite evident the team that was eliminated by the Packers at home in the first round of last year’s playoffs in one of the most embarrassing defeats in franchise history was not close to possessing the talent necessary to end decades of championship futility. But McCarthy didn’t even get the chance to run it back. Jones allowed talent to leave in free agency without moving to replace it, much less upgrade the roster.
Even now, exactly one week before the NFL trade deadline, Jones seems completely unwilling to invest in his 3-4 team or its coaching staff at the expense of collateral for the 2025 season — when he might have a new coaching staff. Wide receivers Davante Adams, Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins and Diontae Johnson have all been traded, none to catch passes from Prescott.
The Cowboys were in a similarly dire predicament in 2018 and traded a first-round pick to the Raiders for Cooper. They went on to win the NFC East and a playoff game. But Jones did that for Jason Garrett. He doesn’t seem motivated to do the same for McCarthy.
I expect Jones will cite the eventual returns of injured defensive players Micah Parsons, DaRon Bland and DeMarcus Lawrence as being more significant in terms of impact than any trades they could make.
The Cowboys rank 31st in scoring defense but Mike Zimmer has legitimate excuses on his side of the ball. McCarthy doesn’t. The offense needed to score its way through adversity and hasn’t proven capable often enough.
Unless there is an abrupt and dramatic reversal in performance and results, we could be approaching McCarthy’s final 10 games as head coach of the Cowboys. This is the furthest into a season that the Cowboys are below .500 since McCarthy’s first in Dallas.
After winning 12 games each of the past three seasons, this team is essentially back where it started when McCarthy stepped off the plane five years ago.
What probably spared McCarthy last year might be his undoing when Jones evaluates him at the end of the season: His performance as the offensive play-caller.
The Cowboys were the highest-scoring team in the NFL for two of the past three seasons. That’s team, not offense. Clearly, those three seasons coincided with Dan Quinn calling defenses that led the NFL in takeaways with 93 defensive touchdowns and points off turnovers. McCarthy’s offense is exposed without the defensive points, the short fields and the extra possessions are the result of those takeaways.
In their three consecutive 12-win seasons, the Cowboys were at least +10 in turnover differential with a high of +14. This season, with Prescott throwing eight interceptions — the highest total of his career through seven games — the Cowboys are -8.
“Personally, I’m very frustrated,’’ McCarthy said. “If you want to be known for something as a football team, it’s taking care of the football and taking it away. I know my experience in the league would reflect that.”
I asked McCarthy which part of the equation is most important to him — his offense’s inability to protect the football or the lack of takeaways from the defense.
“I think it’s bigger on taking care of it,” McCarthy said. “Just like anything if you take care of the football every single week, you’re never going to lose the turnover ratio, at worst it would be zero-zero.
“We’re losing the turnover ratio week in and week out and we’ve not been able to stop the run or stay committed to the run. That’s how we have to play and that’s how we’re gonna play. We need to be better at it.”
After paying Ezekiel Elliott and then Tony Pollard at the top of the running-back market, the front office decided that was not necessary. They determined they would not pay big money to a running back. That’s understandable but the consequences of that decision — combined with failing to draft a running back — have proved devastating.
The Cowboys rank last in the NFL in rushing. They haven’t had a 100-yard rushing game in 21 games. They’re the only team without a 20-yard run this season. Was it reasonable to expect anything else with Rico Dowdle, Dalvin Cook and Elliott, whom the coaches decided two years ago they didn’t need?
The Cowboys badly miscalculated the impact on the entire offense of starting two rookies on the offensive line for the first time since 2011. Left tackle Tyler Smith and center Cooper Beebe have started all but one game.
“The (defensive) line movement has been constant,” McCarthy said. “We have started two rookie offensive linemen [since] Week 1, so they’ve been stunting and gaming us since we got off the bus.’’
McCarthy was frustrated with himself that he didn’t empty his call sheet against the 49ers. His play-calling was influenced by his concern about the offensive line’s ability to protect the quarterback.
In their five years together, McCarthy has never seen Prescott hit with such frequency and so often pressured into mistakes. Last season, Prescott finished second in the MVP voting and led the NFL in touchdown passes. This year, he’s admittedly frustrated, explaining one interception after another. He says he understands it cannot continue and yet it does.
The Cowboys are 7-16 in Prescott’s career when the quarterback throws multiple interceptions in a game, which he had done in three consecutive weeks for the first time in his career.
“You can’t dwell on them,’’ offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer said. “You got to go play the game. We trust Dak. Dak is going to make way more good decisions than bad decisions… We think and feel very strongly that Dak will get out of this, and we’ll get out of this. We have to do that to be as good as we can be.”
McCarthy invested significantly in improving his team’s performance during the bye week. He modified practices to emphasize group work, eliminating individual drills. The players seemed to believe improvement would be obvious when they next took the field. They cited the intensity, energy and improved communication at practice.
Yet, McCarthy was dismayed from the sideline as he observed communication mistakes on plays 4, 5, 6 and 7 of his 15-play offensive script to open the game. The script is composed of plays in which the team has the most confidence will create success.
“I just think clearly the details and then the communication and from that you have production and then the confidence grows and then the physicality grows, winning production and everything takes care of itself,’’ McCarthy said.
If McCarthy’s value to Jones is what he brings to Prescott and the offense, the head coach seems doomed.
Even though the failure isn’t his fault alone.
Two years ago, in a playoff game, the Cowboys lost to the 49ers because they lacked offensive firepower with only CeeDee Lamb and Pollard capable of making explosive plays. On Sunday, two years later, they had even fewer playmakers. That seems an egregious mistake.
That’s why Prescott was left to throw an end zone pass to undrafted rookie tight end Brevyn Spann-Ford and to throw a perfect deep ball on the final possession of a six-point loss to KaVontae Turpin, a 5-7 kickoff returner. Both throws were perfect. Neither was completed.
McCarthy remains committed to keeping players focused in a place where that can prove enormously challenging.
“We need to keep it about football,’’ he said. “We can’t waste our time on anything that doesn’t help us win. … I’m about winning and everybody has got a job to do. Our job is to win. And my job is to make sure we stay about winning, and not get caught up in the other stuff.”