The two decisions about coaches are exactly what his history would predict.
It makes perfect sense that a large number of Dallas Cowboys supporters wanted head coach Mike McCarthy fired. That was also the target of much of the more cursory media attention. After a 12-win season, everything fizzled out for the third consecutive season. Anger toward McCarthy was easy to come by. Dan Quinn, the defensive end, also received his fair share of stick after his team performed terribly against strong opposition. The reaction was especially intense because of how horribly awful the Green Bay Packers game ended.
We now know that McCarthy will come back to complete his five-year deal, and in the event that Quinn is unable to land a head coaching position with one of the numerous teams that have asked to interview, the DC job will be reserved for him. There was much dismay about those decisions. They shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise. This is simply Jerry Jones’s business model.
We are very bad at learning from history in general, so it is not at all unexpected that the lessons of Jones’ time as owner of the Cowboys would be overlooked. If you just looked at past decisions, this all was very predictable.
Start with the very beginning of things for the Jones family. When he bought the team, he fired Tom Landry, a move that was sadly overdue, but that angered much of the fan base with how callously it was handled. Then he brought in old friend Jimmy Johnson to rebuild the team. Johnson did so in spectacular fashion, winning back-to-back championships before the somewhat acrimonious divorce with Jones. Johnson had done so well, Barry Switzer was able to get a third Lombardi Trophy just on the strength of the roster he inherited.
Jones took significant risks when he hired Johnson and purchased the Cowboys. One may legitimately argue that he overcredited himself and assumed the position of general manager following Johnson’s departure. In addition to winning rings, Johnson restored Dallas’ status as the league’s premier team, bringing with him an extra measure of flash and glamour that the quiet Landry had never experienced. Jones confused that with being the head of the group. Even with the decades-long postseason futility that followed that championship, he has done an amazing job of preserving that image through successful and unsuccessful seasons.
At first, Jones continued his gambling ways with splashy trades. But after the failures of 2012 when neither the trade up to get Morris Claiborne or the free agent signing of Brandon Carr worked out, he suddenly got very conservative.
Part of that was feeling burned, but we have to consider his age. As we get older, most of us become more risk-averse. Another factor is that Jerry and his son Stephen often give the impression of thinking they are the smartest guys in the room. They have convinced themselves they can build a winning roster through draft picks and largely avoiding any significant spending on outside free agents. If they do hand out lucrative free agent contracts, it is to their own players, because, as they frequently say, “we like our own guys.”
That conservative nature also has bled over into the way coaches are hired and fired. Since Switzer, Jerry has stuck to known quantities, either promoting assistants from within the building like Chan Gailey, Dave Campo, or Jason Garrett, or hiring retread head coaches Bill Parcells, Wade Phillips, and Mike McCarthy. They have completely missed out on some of the dynamic, young assistants other teams have hired.
Those coaches, like Kyle Shanahan and so much of his coaching tree, have brought innovation and freshness to their teams, things that are so absent with Dallas. It seems clear Jerry is only comfortable with people he knows, either from being around them in the building, or from meeting them at NFL functions, where he gets to rub elbows with head coaches but seldom sees those energetic assistants.
He gets a corporate man who is far less likely to shake things up the way things need to when he promotes from inside. All of those prior head coaches have failed, or at least left, another team before joining this one. Both options don’t lead to the kind of transformation the Cowboys so obviously require. Quinn is one of the important assistants who follows the prior head coach trend. They do indeed have a history. Jerry, though, prefers to remember the happy times rather than the circumstances surrounding their exit.
Additionally, he seems loathe to actually fire a coach, at least since Gailey and Campo. It took a complete meltdown to fire Phillips, and that included clear signs the locker room had abandoned their head coach. While the playoff losses are a kind of meltdown, the regular seasons under McCarthy were successful, at least in terms of wins and losses. And all reports are that he and Quinn still have their players’ support and loyalty.
All that adds up to exactly what we see playing out. McCarthy will get to coach the last year of his contract, and if things don’t go well, then Jerry just has to not offer a new deal. Quinn is being left up to what happens with his interviews, but being willing to keep him if nothing comes about there is in the same vein.
Jerry has spoken about being willing to take a large risk again, but he hasn’t really taken any concrete moves in that regard, which is sad given his advanced age. Additionally, Stephen offers a natural continuity because he probably wouldn’t have changed much from his father after serving as his apprentice for several decades.
To be honest, I wasn’t too hopeful that McCarthy would be fired in the wake of the Packers scandal. That’s simply not Jerry’s style, so it was quite fitting that he took some time to think things through before making his announcement. If there are any changes at the top, we will have to wait at least another season. It’s going to be a pivotal year for McCarthy and potentially even Dak Prescott. It’s more of the same for the time being, but next year might be very different.
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