On Jan. 8, 2020, Mike McCarthy sauntered into the Star and took a seat between Jerry and Stephen Jones. The media crowded around, waiting to hear what the three most powerful members of the Dallas Cowboys organization had to say. In his first interview after being named the ninth coach in franchise history, McCarthy made a confession. He had not studied every game from the season prior, an acknowledgment that most likely aided his candidacy. While the comment drew a few laughs, it also raised questions about the type of coach McCarthy was going to be.
As he heads into his third season, the answers remain clouded. McCarthy is on the clock as he tries to deliver results. On the heels of yet another disappointing Cowboys postseason exit, the expectations seem obvious: deliver a playoff run unlike anything since the ’90s, or risk being run out of town.
But it’s too soon to declare that McCarthy is the problem in Dallas. Not when the basis for any judgment of what he has, or hasn’t, accomplished in Dallas is effectively weighed on a one-year sample size. (The injury-plagued 2020 Cowboys cannot be used as a barometer for coaching success.)
This is not an endorsement for the Cowboys to retain McCarthy regardless of what happens on the field. If Dallas struggles, he needs to be shown the door. But he has proven that with talent around him, he can be a successful coach. And not as much talent as you might think, either. When McCarthy won his only Super Bowl in 2010, the Packers possessed the ninth-best roster in the league, according to Pro Football Focus, with the 11th-best offense and the 10th-best defense. Throughout his 13-season tenure in Green Bay, only six Packers were voted as first-team All-Pros (last year alone, the Cowboys had three). Nevertheless, the Packers had only five seasons with fewer than 10 wins during that span. Having a future Hall of Fame quarterback in Aaron Rodgers certainly helped, but in an offseason study conducted by PFF, McCarthy ranked as a top-10 coach based on the number of expected wins he would accumulate if he had coached an average roster over the last 11 years. There is a reason, in other words, he is 51 games above .500 for his career, fifth-best among active coaches.
McCarthy is probably not going to be considered one of the top-tier coaches in the NFL again, and as good as Dak Prescott is, McCarthy can’t lean on him to pick up the slack the same way he could Rodgers. But good things tend to happen when front offices give him resources.
Except, heading into a pivotal season for McCarthy, the Cowboys have done the opposite of that. Even before left tackle Tyron Smith was sidelined, PFF ranked Dallas as having just the 16th-most talented starting roster in the league. By comparison, PFF ranked the 2021 Cowboys second. Jerry and Stephen are essentially expecting McCarthy to take a depleted roster and elevate it to a place it hasn’t been in 26 years.
The reluctance of the front office to act while the roster deteriorates has been well-documented. Dallas is relying on players such as Josh Ball and Matt Waletzko, who have never taken an NFL snap, to elevate an offensive line that is as weak as it has been in 10 years. The front office declined to add depth despite knowing that Smith has not played a full season since 2015. CeeDee Lamb is the only wide receiver on the active roster with an NFL touchdown catch after the Joneses traded Amari Cooper for a fifth-round draft pick and let Cedrick Wilson walk. They did that knowing Michael Gallup will miss time due to an ACL injury suffered in January. Their solution to the kicking woes that might have cost them the top seed in the NFC was to bring back the same player they banished three years ago. All told, their free-agent additions probably amount to twoish meaningful contributors. No wonder social media is in a frenzy because Dallas maybe, possibly, could bring in 40-year-old Jason Peters to salvage the tackle group despite being past his Hall of Fame-caliber peak.
Which, the Cowboys have never been high-rollers in free agency. Over the past 12 years, Dallas has mostly spent like a middle-of-the pack team, starting a season in the bottom 10 of available cap space only once, in 2012. This year, though, they’ve taken the savings to a new level. The Cowboys now have the third-most cap space in the NFL, which would be their second-highest offseason finish since Spotrac began tracking the data in 2011. The only year they have spent less of their cap relative to the rest of the league was in 2020, when COVID-19 created unusual restrictions for bringing in and signing free agents. And Jerry’s “we trust our guys” mentality is off the charts. From 2012 to 2020, the roster always possessed somewhere between from 18 to 25 drafted players. Last season that number rose to 30. This year, the number has risen to 36, meaning Dallas will start the season with its fewest number of free agents on the roster since at least 2011.
Prior to this year, the last 12 seasons had a common theme: the Cowboys were tentative in the offseason but willing to take their shots if they believed it would improve the team, especially coming off division titles. That’s what led them to roll the dice on Greg Hardy after winning the NFC East in 2014 once Carolina released the Pro Bowl edge rusher due to legal troubles. It’s why they took on Robert Quinn’s big-money contract at the nadir of his value after winning the division in 2018. Even when the Cowboys mostly stood pat after the 2016 division title, the direction was understandable given the projected growth from a young roster. And in all three cases, their offseasons after those division titles yielded positive reviews.
But no one believes the 2022 Cowboys are a better team than they were last year. Why is this offseason different? Dallas has the third-most cap space, its quarterback is in his prime, it finally has a defense to complement the offense, and everyone knows where the holes are. It also has Philadelphia breathing down its neck after the Eagles acted with a high level of urgency, taking big swings in the draft and in free agency to upgrade their receiving core (star wideout A.J. Brown), secondary (former Saints safety Chauncey Gardner-Johnson), and defensive line (enormous first-round draft pick Jordan Davis).
So it’s worth wondering whether McCarthy is being set up to fail. Because one of three things is true. One, the Cowboys genuinely don’t know what everyone else does, that McCarthy is a coach dependent on his circumstances. Two, the Cowboys genuinely believe they are good enough to win and the front office believes it has done good work this offseason. Three, the front office is fully aware of McCarthy’s limitations and that the roster is worse off than it was last year, in which case it’s deliberate negligence.
For McCarthy’s purposes, it doesn’t really matter which is true, because any of them would make his employer as complicit as him if the Cowboys disappoint this season. And if that happens, the first source of scrutiny will be McCarthy, just like it was last offseason. You can draw your own conclusions about what might come next–a phone call to a certain former New Orleans Saints head coach, perhaps? But if a coaching change does happen, one thing will be beyond reproach: the two men who sat on either side of McCarthy during his introductory press conference will have helped drive him out of town with their inaction.
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