Cowboys legend blasts Mike McCarthy decision.
During a Thursday visit on CBS Sports Radio’s “Maggie and Perloff” program, Dallas Cowboys great and Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith expressed dissatisfaction with the franchise’s offseason.
“Our team just seems to be lost,” Smith remarked about the Cowboys, according to NJ.com’s Bridget Hyland. “I cannot put my finger on why it looks so, so bad.”
Smith was then questioned why, if his judgment is right, Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones retained Mike McCarthy as Dallas’ head coach after the team’s 48-32 wild-card playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers on January 14.
“Because I’m not the GM,” Smith replied immediately.
McCarthy’s Cowboys have gone 12-5 in the past three regular seasons, but have only won once in the playoffs. Jones did not dismiss McCarthy after the Green Bay game, but the 60-year-old coach’s contract expires next season and he is unlikely to sign an extension.
“I think our team and organization right now give the appearance of becoming a great organization, of being a great team, and they sell everybody on it every year,” Smith went on to say. “And selling people on it and getting the ratings around it is something that’s important, but I think there are things that are much more important than all of the hype.”
Jones’ selection of former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick as McCarthy’s replacement would have garnered significant “hype”. Some speculate that Belichick’s decision to remain a free agent this summer is due to his belief that the Dallas position will be available in 11 months.
“I’ve never known the Cowboys organization to be a hype organization, but I think when you look at our teams, we make the playoffs, we look like we’re capable of going all the way, but we don’t,” he said. “I believe that is a mental obstacle, and that it is a result of players failing to fulfill the task and expectation of becoming great and establishing supremacy as individuals and as a group of men. And I don’t see it regularly from our team or our company.”
Jones was previously endorsed by Cowboys great and Hall of Famer Troy Aikman, giving McCarthy a final chance to complete a lengthy postseason run with the organization. It remains to be seen whether Dallas simply winning the NFC Championship next January will be enough to earn McCarthy a new contract from Jones.
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