Why the Dallas Cowboys were right to retain Mike McCarthy

Why the Dallas Cowboys were right to retain Mike McCarthy

Following the Cowboys’ terrible playoff home loss, there was a lot of conjecture online for several days.

Eventually, the team revealed that Mike McCarthy would be returning for the 2024 campaign.

Naturally, this has sparked a lively reaction from the supporters,

many of whom were eager to try something different following the difficult defeat.

Although it’s understandable to be frustrated by yet another early playoff exit,

the choice to really remove a coach needs to be considered more carefully.

wants to see the Cowboys return to the Super Bowl and have a successful postseason run.

Not a single person working on this franchise’s building is unaware of its objective.

However, there’s also the obvious truth that it’s difficult to win a Super Bowl.

There are only four head coaches in the present era who have won the championship game, and Andy Reid,

who has two rings, is the only one who has done so more than once.

Though he has won it six times, Bill Belichick is undoubtedly the exception in this case and is currently unemployed.

To illustrate how difficult this is,

even Belichick had only made one postseason appearance in the previous four years (he was 0-1 in that season).

Not only is it hard to win the Super Bowl, but it’s hard to win in the playoffs at all.

Just five head coaches currently in use have a winning postseason record—six if we count Belichick.

That represents hardly 20% of the league. Several prominent coaches with a losing record

in the postseason include Doug Pederson and Mike Tomlin,

the champions of the Super Bowl, Kevin Stefanski, who is a strong candidate for Coach of the Year,

and Matt LaFleur, who just eliminated the Cowboys.

To put things in perspective, each season there are thirty-one teams that are not the Super Bowl winners.

It is typical for approximately six teams to replace their head coach following the season,

meaning that approximately twenty-five teams annually remain with their current

head coach despite not winning the Super Bowl.

That represents more than 78% of the league that chooses not to rotate its leadership each year.

That’s not even accounting for the teams’ performance and future directions.

The most recent instance of a team firing its coach after making it to the playoffs dates back to the 2017 campaign.

That was Mike Mularkey’s firing by the Titans following his second consecutive 9-7 result and his first-ever postseason trip.

That was a surprising decision that was a part of a convoluted story that finally revealed a rift between Mularkey and his players.

Mike Vrabel took Mularkey’s place in Tennessee, and the team’s early performances were positive.

In his first four seasons, Vrabel finished 41–24. He made it to the playoffs three times in a row and even made it to the conference final in 2019.

However, after two consecutive losing seasons, things faded out, and Vrabel was just sacked.

The latest coach to be fired by a team after making consecutive postseason appearances was John Fox,

who was let go by the Broncos following the 2014 campaign. In his four seasons in Denver, Fox went 46–18,

qualifying for the playoffs each year and even making it to the Super Bowl once.

After three seasons in which he won twelve or more games, Denver decided to let him go in an effort to extend Peyton Manning’s Super Bowl window.

The decision was successful, as Gary Kubiak’s Broncos won the Super Bowl the following season.

Though he was benched for Brock Osweiler and saw a significant decline in performance that season,

Manning was able to regain the starting position just before the postseason got underway.

After Kubiak retired and Denver missed the playoffs the next year, the franchise hasn’t even had a winning season,

much less made it to the playoffs, since then.

Jerry Jones had to consider that kind of danger last week. McCarthy hasn’t performed well in the postseason thus far, but other coaches do the same thing.

That’s hardly a good enough excuse to start over. Additionally, the success rate of newly hired coaches is incredibly low, and the coaches with previous head coaching experience – notably Belichick and Vrabel – are coming off several down years.

McCarthy, the first Cowboys coach since Barry Switzer to lead the team to three consecutive postseasons,

has not only given Dallas a measure of stability,

but he is also coming off a season in which Dak Prescott had the best season of his career.

That resulted from McCarthy calling plays,

and Prescott hasn’t held back from expressing how pleased he is with his new playwright.

Maintaining McCarthy means continuing to back the franchise quarterback

in addition to having a coach who gets the team to the postseason every year.

As the NFL’s longest-tenured starting quarterback,

asking Prescott to adjust to a new offense for the third time in three years is just not a winning formula.

Doing so is particularly foolish in light of Prescott and CeeDee Lamb and Jake Ferguson – just put up the best year of his career.

It is a risk with extremely slim chances that the Cowboys could

have been able to locate another head coach who would do better in the postseason.

And the Cowboys have a coach who can reliably get them to the postseason for the first time in real decades.

It’s understandable that the fans are craving more,

but winning the playoffs is a prerequisite for going to the Super Bowl.

The Cowboys stand to gain the most if McCarthy stays with the team through 2024.

Will McClay and this personnel department will try to strengthen any roster flaws and provide

McCarthy with a great group that should be able to contend for a championship, as is the case every summer.

The Cowboys will make an effort to correct the mistakes made in the previous season even if they decide to keep the coach. It just indicates that,

despite the fact that it may not be what will immediately please their fan base,

they are being realistic about their best course of action.

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