Machota: Five key takeaways from a lengthy visit with new Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy

Cotton

One-armed Knife Sharpener
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
119,701



By Jon Machota 56m ago

INDIANAPOLIS — Mike McCarthy looked completely at ease while meeting with reporters on Wednesday inside the Indiana Convention Center.

The new Cowboys head coach answered questions for 20 minutes from a podium at the NFL’s annual scouting combine. He then fielded another 20 minutes’ worth of on-the-record questions from local reporters during lunch at a nearby steakhouse. A lengthy off-the-record discussion followed.

Similar to his introductory news conference inside the atrium of the Ford Center, McCarthy occasionally cracked jokes and seemed to be genuinely enjoying a part of the job that many coaches dislike.

Oddly enough, as comfortable as the former Green Bay Packers coach appeared, the stressful demands of his new gig are actually what he’s enjoying most.

“I think when you do step away and you look at what stress does to your body and try to stay out of that adrenaline phase that it can put you in if you let it eat you up – enjoy it, enjoy the stress of the job,” McCarthy said. “Going to bed with your mind going 100 miles per hour and trying to relax and waking up ready to roll. I missed all that. It’s a different profession because you have to maximize every day.”

One of his biggest stresses at the moment is getting himself and his staff organized and prepared to hit the ground running when players arrive for the offseason workout program on April 6. The Cowboys are one of five teams that get an earlier start because they have a new head coach (the Browns, Giants, Panthers and Redskins are the other four). Clubs with returning head coaches aren’t permitted to begin until April 20.

“You have to be ‘on’ with your time,” McCarthy said. “Everybody talks about work ethic, and ‘this guy works until two in the morning.’ That doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s workload capacity. It’s workload efficiency. And really being totally dialed-in to that. Because that’s what the players need. You got to be able to get done more in less time, and you got to make the game easy for them so they’re playing football. That’s what excites me every day.”

The on-conversation covered went in many directions and covered many topics. Here are the top five highlights.

1.) McCarthy is convinced the Cowboys have their franchise QB in Dak Prescott.

“Definitely,” McCarthy said. “It’s exactly where we want to be with Dak. I think what he’s done up to this point speaks to itself. And, really, Dak is in a business situation right now. I’ve gone through this as a head coach with a number of my players in the past. Like anything, it’s just time to be patient and let the business people work out the business matters. That’s really where we are as an organization, and that’s where Dak is in a personal flight to get a contract done.”

McCarthy, who has talked with Prescott over the phone since getting hired last month, said he hasn’t spent much time thinking about the possibility of the team’s QB not showing up for voluntary workouts if the Cowboys use the franchise tag on him.

“I think he’s been impressive,” McCarthy added. “I know I’ve been impressed with him since the first time that I saw him play live up in Green Bay when they came to Lambeau. First impressions, I think, are very important when you see quarterbacks on the field because in-person evaluations, particularly at that position, have always carried more weight as far as how I felt about a player. So I think he’s gotten off to a great start, he’s built a really good foundation, I’m told he’s a tremendous leader. In my philosophy as we get with the personnel department and as we go through that, defenses get you to the championship, (but) quarterbacks win championships. I definitely feel Dak is that quarterback.”

2.) He prioritizes talent over scheme fit.

The Cowboys have been heavily criticized for drafting Taco Charlton over T.J. Watt with the 28th overall pick in 2017 because Charlton was a better fit for former defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli’s scheme as a 4-3 end. Dallas viewed Watt as more of a 3-4 outside linebacker. Charlton is no longer on the roster. Watt, who went two picks later, has gone on to become one of the league’s top defenders.

“We’ve talked about this a lot,” McCarthy said. “It’s really on where do you put the players? From what they tell me, the way Rod formatted each position on where certain guys fit, it’s going to be different here because we’re running a different scheme. I’ve always felt that … part of it is developing, because in Green Bay, when you’re picking 26, 27, 28, you’re down there in the 20s every year, when you’re throwing away good players because they don’t fit your system, you got to take a hard look at your system. If the guy is a good football player, he can play for me.”

McCarthy added, “At the end of the day, when we line up 53 of our guys, I want six rushers and I want four inside players. … We’re going to score points, so we better have enough pass rushers on our team because we’re going to be in those kinds of games. That’s the way we’re built, that’s the way we were built in Green Bay. I want to be much better on defense at this spot than I was in my last opportunity. That’s a goal of mine. It’s fun to have to score 35 points every game, but that’s hard.”

3.) Expect tweaks to the offensive play calls, not an overhaul.

“The only thing we’ve changed is some systematic,” McCarthy said. “Like the way they called runs. They called all the runs like they were 30 series runs. Just to give you an example, like 35 Wolf. And what I’ve done is I’m a little more systematic and anal in the way I call the runs, protections and the pass. I call them all the same level of structure system-wise. If Wolf was a 6-man blocking scheme, we’ll call it 63 Wolf. Six-man blocking, at the three hole, wolf is the concept. If the tight end is not in the game, we’d call it 53. But then if there’s two tight ends, we’ll call it 73. So we’re going to call how many blockers. We’re going to be more detailed in the variations of how we call it. So we’ve added a numbering system to their base.

“So with that, that gives us more flexibility and game-planning when we get into the variations of how we utilize it. I mean, are we going to have two tight ends, four tight ends, five tight ends? Are we going to have two fullbacks? Or no fullbacks? When you do it this way, at this level of detail, it gives you that flexibility when the roster is adjusted.”

4.) One particular area on the roster was a pleasant surprise.

“The offensive line, from afar, I know was very talented, but they played at such a high level in the dropback game and they did it with dropback three-point stances and the whole world knew it,” McCarthy explained. “They’d drop back, throw the ball and still pass-protect … We always struggled against them in the run game. But I think their pass blocking is much better than I thought it would be.”

5.) Analytics will be used “as much as possible.”

“Just talking with our guys last night, there are a lot of good classes and seminars going on here Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” McCarthy explained. “All of our guys have been part of that. We’ll get together Monday morning with the group. We’ve broken up into what we call pods. So we have a game-management pod. We’ve met exclusively with CAI and Telemetry. These are third-party programs we already have in our building, so how can we enhance that?

“At the end of the day, it’s really going to be taking all these great ideas and deciding which ones we can formulate and fit into our everyday operation. We have a quality control analyst. Those guys are part of the coaching staff. If it’s not integrated in our everyday deal, then we won’t use it. But we have a good plan. It’s going to take a lot of work to get done what we want to get done, so I’m curious to see all that they’ve seen in the last couple days and see if they’ve seen anything we want to add. … Analytics will be a healthy part of what we do.”
 

p1_

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
26,454
He prioritizes talent over scheme fit.

The Cowboys have been heavily criticized for drafting Taco Charlton over T.J. Watt with the 28th overall pick in 2017 because Charlton was a better fit for former defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli’s scheme as a 4-3 end. Dallas viewed Watt as more of a 3-4 outside linebacker. Charlton is no longer on the roster. Watt, who went two picks later, has gone on to become one of the league’s top defenders.

“We’ve talked about this a lot,” McCarthy said. “It’s really on where do you put the players? From what they tell me, the way Rod formatted each position on where certain guys fit, it’s going to be different here because we’re running a different scheme. I’ve always felt that … part of it is developing, because in Green Bay, when you’re picking 26, 27, 28, you’re down there in the 20s every year, when you’re throwing away good players because they don’t fit your system, you got to take a hard look at your system. If the guy is a good football player, he can play for me.”

McCarthy added, “At the end of the day, when we line up 53 of our guys, I want six rushers and I want four inside players. … We’re going to score points, so we better have enough pass rushers on our team because we’re going to be in those kinds of games. That’s the way we’re built, that’s the way we were built in Green Bay. I want to be much better on defense at this spot than I was in my last opportunity. That’s a goal of mine. It’s fun to have to score 35 points every game, but that’s hard.”
Fucking Rod Marinelli makes me furious. So glad he’s gone.
 
Top Bottom