Why the Dallas Cowboys were right to retain Mike McCarthy.
It wasn’t the popular move, but keeping Mike McCarthy was the correct move to some people.
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.
The frustration over yet another early playoff exit is certainly valid, but the decision to actually fire a coach must be more than just a response to such frustration. Everyone wants to see the Cowboys make a deep playoff run and, ultimately, get back to the Super Bowl. There is not a single soul in the building for this franchise that doesn’t understand what the goal is.
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 without even taking into consideration the success and trajectory of the teams, either. You have to go all the way back to the 2017 season to find the last time a team fired their coach after reaching the playoffs. That was the Titans, who fired Mike Mularkey after his second straight 9-7 finish and his first playoff berth. That move came as a bit of a shock, and was part of a long and winding saga that ultimately boiled down to a disconnect between Mularkey and his players.
Tennessee replaced Mularkey with Mike Vrabel, and early results seemed encouraging. Vrabel went 41-24 in his first four seasons, reaching the playoffs three straight seasons and even advancing to the conference championship game in 2019. However, things fizzled out, and Vrabel was just fired after two straight losing seasons.
The last time a team fired their coach after consecutive playoff appearances was John Fox, whom the Broncos fired after the 2014 season. Fox was 46-18 in four seasons in Denver, making the playoffs each year and even reaching the Super Bowl once. He won 12+ games in his last three seasons, but Denver opted to move on in an attempt to maximize their Super Bowl window with Peyton Manning.
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 percentage of newly hired coaches is incredibly low, and the coaches that are available with head coaching experience—namely, Belichick and Vrabel—are coming off of several unsuccessful seasons.
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. McCarthy’s selection of plays brought to that, and Prescott hasn’t held back in sharing his joy at his new play-caller.
Keeping McCarthy isn’t just about keeping a coach who consistently makes the postseason, but it’s also about continuing to support the franchise quarterback. Asking Prescott to adjust to a new offense for the third time in three years, as the longest tenured starting quarterback in the NFL, is simply not a recipe for success. It’s especially unwise to do so after Prescott – not to mention 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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