Cowboys legend says he would have fired head coach Mike McCarthy if he were the Dallas GM
Jerry Jones, the owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame for leading the team to three Super Bowl championships from 1992 to 1995.
Emmitt Smith, the NFL’s all-time leader in rushing yards (18,355) and touchdowns (164), played a significant role in the success of these teams. Smith, like many Cowboys supporters, is disillusioned with the state of circumstances around Dallas after their 48-32 wild card round loss to the seventh-seeded Green Bay Packers, despite possessing the NFC’s second seed and home field advantage.
On Thursday’s “Maggie and Perloff” radio broadcast from the Super Bowl radio row in Las Vegas, Smith expressed concern about his Cowboys’ performance. “I just cannot put my finger on why it looks so, so bad.”
Many Cowboys supporters wanted head coach Mike McCarthy fired for that faceplant after McCarthy’s team became the first to win 12 games in three straight seasons but fail to win a conference championship in any of them, losing three of their four postseason games during this stretch. Jones elected to keep his head coach, who has the highest career win percentage of any coach in team history with a 42-25 (62.7%) regular season record.
That record made Jones confident enough to say in a statement that, “This team is very close and capable of achieving our ultimate goals, and the best step forward for us will be with Mike McCarthy as our head coach
When co-host Andrew Perloff asked Smith why he thought McCarthy was retained for the final year of his Cowboys contract, he made it very clear he and Jones do not see eye to eye on this subject.
“Because I’m not the GM,” Smith explained. “To be honest with you, I thought that move would have been made because of how bad it looked.”
Smith believes Jones and the Cowboys are putting style before substance when it comes to Dallas’ on-field performance, noting an apparent mental barrier between the organization and postseason success.
“I think our team and organization right now give the appearance of becoming a great organization and being a great team,” Smith went on to say. “They sell it to everyone every year. Selling people on it and then getting ratings on it is critical. I believe there are things far more significant than all of the hype.
I’ve never known the Cowboys organization to be a hype organization, but I think overall when you look at our teams, we make the playoffs. We look like we are capable of going all the way, but we don’t. For some reason, I think that’s a mental block. I think it’s part of preparations of players not meeting the challenge and the expectations of becoming great and establishing your dominance as an individual player or as a group of men. I don’t see that consistently from our team and our organization.”
Following the team’s latest postseason stumble, quarterback Dak Prescott’s playoff record of 2-5 as the Cowboys’ starting quarterback is tied for the worst in NFL history among those with at least five playoff starts along with Alex Smith (2005-2020) and Billy Kilmer (1961-1978). Smith said the 2023 regular season’s passing touchdowns leader (36) needs to improve his preparation, and he used what happened in the Cowboys’ narrow 20-19 win over the Detroit Lions in Week 17 as the example for his point. 
“I think it’s preparation,” Smith said when asked why Prescott hasn’t helped the Cowboys advance beyond the divisional round of the playoffs. “I can only think of one game that summarizes everything for me. We are playing Detroit in Dallas. It’s a great game. With 7:20 remaining in the game, Prescott’s eight-yard touchdown pass to Brandin Cooks gave us the lead (17-13). Detroit is attempting to close the gap and retake the lead. With 2:13 left in the game, safety Donovan Wilson intercepts Jared Goff at the Detroit 26-yard line.
“It’s about three minutes left, and I think they are almost out of timeouts, if not out of timeouts they will be. All we have to do is just milk the clock. Instead, guess what? We throw the ball three straight times [after a gain of seven on a first-down run play by Tony Pollard is negated by a tripping penalty].
How smart is that? Absolutely hideous. All you have to do is run the rock or take a knee. I don’t care. When you throw the ball the third time and the quarterback throws the ball out of bounds to stop the clock, he doesn’t even take a sack. That says to me either he was not prepared properly or he forgot he was playing the game.”
To be fair to Prescott, it appeared as though he was simply running the plays McCarthy called on that drive, which ended in a 43-yard Brandon Aubrey field goal to put Dallas up 20-13 with 1:45 left in the game. The head coach said as much postgame that day.
“The thing there is that we’re trying to put it away,” McCarthy added. “Obviously, you call plays that you are proud of, but first down was a problem for us throughout the day. I can’t tell you how many second-and-longs we had, and I saw the penalty on first down. I’m trying to be inside striking distance on third downs, that was my thought.”
Smith clearly disagrees with McCarthy’s ideas on the game’s final play-calling, just as he argues with Jones on McCarthy’s return in 2024.
Leave a Reply