After one of the most maddening seasons in franchise history, frustrated fans, ravenous for their pound of flesh, are now happily feasting on it. With the pitchforks and torches having been brandished for more than a year, the mob has finally gotten its way. Last week, the Dallas Cowboys and head coach Mike McCarthy mutually parted ways. Big Mike is out in Big D.
As the season was drawing to a close, the odds money was leaning heavily toward a decisively indecisive Jerry Jones allowing the porcine Pittsburgher to take a mulligan on the injury-torpedoed 2024 and run it back again this fall. Negotiations quickly stalled, likely over the specific terms of a potential extension — specifically length and compensation, no doubt — and not unlike a long, loveless marriage, both sides eventually agreed to amicably depart, with one side keeping all the money and the other taking with them a conciliatory “Thank you for your services.” So, there you go, bloodlusters, you’ve gotten your wish.
There’s a certain adage about being careful when wishing that has certainly crossed my mind lately. No one wants to be the dude who dumped his girl because they thought they could land someone better looking only to find out the dumpee was always the one who could have done better. Yet here we are.
Now what? Who’s the superhero out there who’s going to finally turn this thing in a positive direction? Over the last three decades, five skippers have tried, including a current Hall of Famer who came into the organization with two giant rings on his Jersey-roughened fingers already. With the limited options Jerry’s gaggle of good ol’ boys are likely to legitimately pursue, once the announcement is made, there’s more than a dollar scratch-off’s chance that you may end up preferring the devil you knew. I certainly don’t love McCarthy as an offensive mind in the modern NFL, and calling plays might have been a nonnegotiable on his part, but as the man on the sideline or in the locker room smashing watermelons, I’d venture you could do a lot worse. It’s the fear of the possibility that we just might discover the reality of that assumption that gives me pause. Especially when you consider the realistic (italicized, underlined, highlighted) options for replacement.
Jerry likes to humor himself that the glitz of The Star™ will be too bright for any right-minded coaching candidate to resist. I happen to agree with a certain former HOF Cowboy quarterback currently doing color work (and the best in the business at it) on Monday Night Football who opined last week that he “wasn’t so sure about that.”
Firstly, there’s the whole microscope of the Cowboys media circus and all the drama and outside noise that comes along with wearing a headset on Sunday for this team. Then, there’s Jerry’s constant meddling in not just which players are on the roster but which are on the field. Not to mention his inevitable contradictions to your message every time he has a microphone in front of him, which, let’s face it, is always. These things alone should scare away most prime candidates — though large sums of money can usually do a lot toward overcoming these initial aversions. Yeah, about that.
Outside of paying (too late) top-of-market contracts to (exclusively their own) free agents and, sure, for multibillion-dollar football facilities, the Cowboys are notoriously cheap as an organization. If it isn’t cap controlled, like player salaries, or directly related to building the Cowboys’ sports industry-leading brand a la sponsorship deals with cryptocurrency websites, they don’t like spending money on it. That includes coaches. For instance, despite boasting the fourth-best win percentage since he came to Dallas, McCarthy was only estimated to be in the range of the 11th- to 15th-highest paid.
So, you can, outright, at the jump, dismiss any illusions you may have (I have them, too) about that young hotshot boy-genius in Motor City who has suddenly found himself available for interviews again after he was upset by those upstart Washington Commanders on Sunday (whose own coach, former Dallas DC Dan Quinn, many would say, should already be the current Cowboys bench boss). Lions OC Ben Johnson will be the most coveted jewel in the head-coaching crown over these next few weeks, and the eventual winning suitor will likely make him the highest-paid coach in NFL history.
Thanks to his recent and surprisingly convincing acting turn in the new Paramount+ property Landman, we know Jerry likes to keep it in the family. That’s why his coaching staffs always seemed to be filled with either people he already knows or their kids: Jason Garrett, Wade Phillips, Mike Zimmer, the list goes on. That’ll certainly be another strike against Johnson. However, it could be a plus for the last two Cowboys offensive coordinators in Brian Schottenheimer (who is expected to be interviewed) and Kellen Moore (who has already been interviewed). These two I would consider the leaders in the clubhouse if only for the offensive continuity it would provide quarterback Dak Prescott. In addition to Moore, Dallas has already interviewed former Jets HC Robert Saleh and an out-of-nowhere dark horse in Leslie Frazier, the current Seahawks assistant and former Vikings head coach.
Of the interviewees, Saleh managed to be fired midseason by a washed, hallucinogen-addled conspiracy theorist playing quarterback in one of the few organizations more dysfunctional than the Cowboys. That would be a “no” from me, dawg. Schotty didn’t call the plays, so it’s hard to know how much to pin the Cowboys’ offensive impotence this season on him, but there’s a reason McCarthy hired him, so I’m dubious. Conversely, Kellen Moore is a real-deal offensive dynamo, yet I once heard him described as looking like a school lunch lady. Unfair as it may be, I can’t think of anything else anytime I see him, and I’m not sure players would be able to either. Frazier? Hate to say it, but, Rooney Rule, right?
Other names tossed around have been: last season’s assistant head coach, at least in title, Al Harris; Detroit coordinator Aaron Glenn, who played in the Dallas secondary for a couple of years; Washington OC Kliff Kingsbury; Colorado’s Deion Sanders (shoot me in the leg — his approach with the media is enough for me); and even future Ring of Honor member Jason Witten. With either the lack of connections, experience, or humility, it’s hard to see these guys as legitimate options.
It’s obvious to anyone who has followed this team over time that McCarthy, while not necessarily the solution, certainly wasn’t the problem around here. I wouldn’t hold the oxygen in your lungs to think the next guy will be, either. Still, out of the options explored so far, at this moment, my hand forced, I’d have to go with Coach Lunch Lady.
