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By Jon Machota 28m ago
Jerry Jones wasn’t looking for a complete overhaul of the Cowboys roster. He didn’t want a new head coach who would do everything differently than Jason Garrett had over the last decade. If that was the goal, the Cowboys owner and general manager would have interviewed more than two candidates for the position.
Ultimately, the Cowboys were looking to improve in several areas, but there were some aspects they wanted to build on.
Mike McCarthy met with beat reporters Thursday afternoon at The Star. For roughly 30 minutes, the new Cowboys head coach answered questions on the record. Taking information from that interview session, here are five key areas where the Cowboys will likely be different from the previous coaching staff and three key areas where they’ll probably be similar.
How they’ll be different.
1.) New voice. Things started getting stale under Garrett. Sometimes a team just needs a new voice to shake things up. Tony Dungy was certainly capable of winning a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay and ended up winning one with the Colts, but the Buccaneers didn’t go all the way until they fired Dungy in 2002 and traded for Jon Gruden, who won the Super Bowl that same season. Things got stale in Green Bay under McCarthy. Despite the Packers winning a Super Bowl and reaching the playoffs nine times in 12 seasons, McCarthy was fired before he got to finish his 13th year as head coach. Sometimes, it can be good to just change things up. The Cowboys are hoping that a fresh start for McCarthy will lead to him repeating the long-time success he had in Green Bay.
2.) New assistant coaches. During McCarthy’s time with reporters on Thursday, he confirmed the following assistant coaches on his new staff:
Offensive coordinator: Kellen Moore.
Defensive coordinator: Mike Nolan.
Special teams coordinator: John Fassel.
Offensive line coach: Joe Philbin.
Quarterbacks coach: Doug Nussmeier.
Running backs coach: Skip Peete.
Tight ends coach: Lunda Wells.
Defensive line coach: Jim Tomsula.
Linebackers coach: Scott McCurley.
Defensive backs coach: Maurice Linguist.
Assistant defensive backs coach: Al Harris.
Wide receivers coach remains the one major position that has not yet been finalized. Putting together this staff has been McCarthy’s primary goal since arriving at The Star last Wednesday. Since he has been staying at the Omni Frisco Hotel that’s connected to the Cowboys’ practice facility, he’s been meeting with coaches at The Star inside the Cowboys Club, a private social club and restaurant. He joked that he hasn’t been outside since he got off Jones’ helicopter last Wednesday. And because the staff is just coming together, McCarthy said they will not be attending the Senior Bowl next week in Mobile, Alabama.
Other than Moore and Nussmeier, this is a new staff. Peete coached running backs in Dallas from 2007 to 2012, but none of the current running backs were around at that time.
All coaches have their own way of doing things. These assistants will likely want to run different drills, lead meetings in different ways and interact with players differently than the previous staff. It’ll be interesting to see how much things change during practice, because under Garrett, things had been structured similarly for the last nine and a half years. Whether these changes end up making players better or not, they will be different.
McCarthy said Moore, Nolan and Fassel were hired first.
“My view of building a staff is set the coordinators (first),” McCarthy said. “I believe in chain of command, so I wanted the coordinators to be part of the hiring process. … I think when you put together a staff, I think you look at it from my personal perspective of what I’m trying to build, but also I think you have to recognize the staff that the players were working with in the past. You had a lot of young coaches on offense. Experience was something I valued. I think that the experience in this league is something that in my opinion can really help develop players. I came from a program where we were going to be young every year. It was a draft-and-develop program. So the emphasis on having the patience and the understanding that you’re always developing that youngest player in the room because those are the guys that will be playing in November, December. So that’s a priority of mine when I’m establishing what we’re trying to do as a coaching staff, the personalities.
“There’s a certain personality that I was looking for with these staff members, how they fit together. That’s why I think it’s important to hire the coordinators first and make sure that those assistants clearly understand that there’s a chain of command and it fits together. Experience was definitely a primary component that I was looking for.”
3.) Different defensive philosophy. McCarthy plans to make significant changes on defense. Although the Cowboys will remain a 4-3 base defense, it sounds like they will be more multiple, running sub-packages — nickel and dime — 80 to 85 percent of the time. He also noted that some of the terminology was going to change.
It’s no secret that the Cowboys have struggled to force takeaways. McCarthy’s teams were among the best in the league in that department at different times in Green Bay. It’ll be interesting to see if Nolan will be more focused on the back end of the defense, similar to how Kris Richard was recently, giving more room to a veteran coach like Tomsula to handle the defensive line, similar to the way Marinelli handled the line in previous seasons.
“I feel like player acquisition and coaching instruction is a two-way street,” McCarthy said. “I think if you have a system of defense where you need a certain player to fit your scheme, you’re limiting your personnel department. We know what a Dallas Cowboys football player looks like; the length, the athletic ability. Let’s get as many good football players as we possibly can. It’s our job as coaches to make sure our scheme boundaries are plenty wide enough to fit any excellent football player into our program. That’s always been a philosophy of mine on offense and that’ll continue to be so on defense.”
4.) Upgrading the special teams unit. The Cowboys were one of the NFL’s worst teams in this area last season. Jones made it clear after the loss at New England that their special teams problems were on the coaches. Well, Dallas got one of the best in the business at coaching that area of the team. Fassel was the special teams coordinator in Oakland from 2008 to 2011 and then the special teams coordinator for the Rams from 2012 to 2019.
“I think it goes to the personality type that you’re looking for,” McCarthy said of what he was looking for in his coaching staff. “I think it’s important to have individuals that are the same guys every day. This is going to shock you, but I’m not expecting it to be smooth sailing all the way through. We have to make sure we have the right people that handle those adversity times because at the end of the day everything we do is about the locker room. It’s how the players are being coached, motivated, supported. And at the end of the day, that’s what will make our football team go. Just looking for consistent personalities and obviously, the best evaluation of that is if you do have former experience.”
5.) More emphasis on passing on first down. McCarthy never had a back like Ezekiel Elliott in Green Bay. He obviously had two of the game’s all-time great quarterbacks in Brett Favre and then Aaron Rodgers. He was known for throwing a high percentage on first down. Under Garrett, the Cowboys were more likely to run on first down, especially when DeMarco Murray and Elliott were competing for rushing titles. Even though it might not be a significant difference, it seems like a good bet that Dallas will be throwing more on first down in 2020. Elliott will continue to compete for rushing titles. McCarthy has said he believes a good running game is the best complement to Prescott. But it seems like a good bet that the running game is going to look a little different in McCarthy’s first season.
“I think you can’t just do one thing in this league,” McCarthy said. “I think that’s been proven over and over again. Obviously we have an exceptional offensive line, but the run and the normal down and distance runs and the action game need to fit together. That will be a focus. But the starting point will be the zone run. Everybody runs it, and we’ll run it as well as anybody. But pattern schemes, gap schemes, how it’s been communicated here in the past, that will definitely be part of what we do.”
Here’s where they will likely be similar.
1.) Veteran NFL head coach. Jason Garrett was criticized for not leaning more on analytics. Garrett used analytics, just not in-game. He believed in going with his gut and using his experience in the league as a bigger factor while making in-game decisions. I don’t think McCarthy will be all that different in that regard. He has made it known over the last year that he has been working to incorporate more analytics into his coaching style, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be leaning on them more than his own experience of being a successful, Super Bowl-winning head coach. And, frankly, no one will criticize any of those decisions as long as the Cowboys win.
2.) Overall offensive scheme. McCarthy said Thursday that the goal is for Moore to continue calling plays. If there was going to be a significant switch over to the West Coast offense that McCarthy had been using, the head coach would continue calling the plays like he did for almost his entire time in Green Bay. But McCarthy said what Prescott has done in Dallas’ offense is so important that he will adjust to the language the Cowboys have been using.
“This is the first language change that I’ve had to go through since 1989,” McCarthy said. “But this will be good for me, and frankly, it’s not about me.”
A key component to learning that offense was retaining Nussmeier, who has extensive experience in running offenses in college at Washington, Alabama, Michigan and Florida. He was also on Dallas’ staff last year. Perhaps Nussmeier will be able to make the transition process smoother if McCarthy needs a better understanding of something while Moore is installing the offense.
“Kellen was someone I was watching from afar,” McCarthy said, “regardless of what opportunity worked out for myself. The opportunity to work with Kellen was something I was going to pursue either way.”
3.) An ability to work with Jones. The Cowboys’ owner isn’t for every head coach. Garrett handled it in a way that others simply could not. McCarthy seems to be someone who will be able to allow Jones to say what he wants during the week or after games and not let it interfere with the message McCarthy is trying to get across to the team. Jimmy Johnson and Bill Parcells handled dealing with Jones differently than Garrett. McCarthy will likely handle it more like Garrett than the other two.
McCarthy was asked Thursday how much of a wrestling match it was with Jones regarding McCarthy picking his own coaching staff.
“To be honest with you, if that was the case in the past, I was not aware of it,” McCarthy said. “It wasn’t a conversation. We just talked more about culture and the program and how I view things and how we did it in Green Bay and how they’ve done it here. A lot of positive components in place, and I think it’s important for me to stay focused for me to try and utilize those. Everything we do will either be a change from the way they’ve done it before or it’s going to be an adjustment, but hopefully we’re building off all the good, positive things and we’re just emphasizing them. That’s the way I’ve approached it. I feel great about what’s in place already here.”
Jerry Jones wasn’t looking for a complete overhaul of the Cowboys roster. He didn’t want a new head coach who would do everything differently than Jason Garrett had over the last decade. If that was the goal, the Cowboys owner and general manager would have interviewed more than two candidates for the position.
Ultimately, the Cowboys were looking to improve in several areas, but there were some aspects they wanted to build on.
Mike McCarthy met with beat reporters Thursday afternoon at The Star. For roughly 30 minutes, the new Cowboys head coach answered questions on the record. Taking information from that interview session, here are five key areas where the Cowboys will likely be different from the previous coaching staff and three key areas where they’ll probably be similar.
How they’ll be different.
1.) New voice. Things started getting stale under Garrett. Sometimes a team just needs a new voice to shake things up. Tony Dungy was certainly capable of winning a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay and ended up winning one with the Colts, but the Buccaneers didn’t go all the way until they fired Dungy in 2002 and traded for Jon Gruden, who won the Super Bowl that same season. Things got stale in Green Bay under McCarthy. Despite the Packers winning a Super Bowl and reaching the playoffs nine times in 12 seasons, McCarthy was fired before he got to finish his 13th year as head coach. Sometimes, it can be good to just change things up. The Cowboys are hoping that a fresh start for McCarthy will lead to him repeating the long-time success he had in Green Bay.
2.) New assistant coaches. During McCarthy’s time with reporters on Thursday, he confirmed the following assistant coaches on his new staff:
Offensive coordinator: Kellen Moore.
Defensive coordinator: Mike Nolan.
Special teams coordinator: John Fassel.
Offensive line coach: Joe Philbin.
Quarterbacks coach: Doug Nussmeier.
Running backs coach: Skip Peete.
Tight ends coach: Lunda Wells.
Defensive line coach: Jim Tomsula.
Linebackers coach: Scott McCurley.
Defensive backs coach: Maurice Linguist.
Assistant defensive backs coach: Al Harris.
Wide receivers coach remains the one major position that has not yet been finalized. Putting together this staff has been McCarthy’s primary goal since arriving at The Star last Wednesday. Since he has been staying at the Omni Frisco Hotel that’s connected to the Cowboys’ practice facility, he’s been meeting with coaches at The Star inside the Cowboys Club, a private social club and restaurant. He joked that he hasn’t been outside since he got off Jones’ helicopter last Wednesday. And because the staff is just coming together, McCarthy said they will not be attending the Senior Bowl next week in Mobile, Alabama.
Other than Moore and Nussmeier, this is a new staff. Peete coached running backs in Dallas from 2007 to 2012, but none of the current running backs were around at that time.
All coaches have their own way of doing things. These assistants will likely want to run different drills, lead meetings in different ways and interact with players differently than the previous staff. It’ll be interesting to see how much things change during practice, because under Garrett, things had been structured similarly for the last nine and a half years. Whether these changes end up making players better or not, they will be different.
McCarthy said Moore, Nolan and Fassel were hired first.
“My view of building a staff is set the coordinators (first),” McCarthy said. “I believe in chain of command, so I wanted the coordinators to be part of the hiring process. … I think when you put together a staff, I think you look at it from my personal perspective of what I’m trying to build, but also I think you have to recognize the staff that the players were working with in the past. You had a lot of young coaches on offense. Experience was something I valued. I think that the experience in this league is something that in my opinion can really help develop players. I came from a program where we were going to be young every year. It was a draft-and-develop program. So the emphasis on having the patience and the understanding that you’re always developing that youngest player in the room because those are the guys that will be playing in November, December. So that’s a priority of mine when I’m establishing what we’re trying to do as a coaching staff, the personalities.
“There’s a certain personality that I was looking for with these staff members, how they fit together. That’s why I think it’s important to hire the coordinators first and make sure that those assistants clearly understand that there’s a chain of command and it fits together. Experience was definitely a primary component that I was looking for.”
3.) Different defensive philosophy. McCarthy plans to make significant changes on defense. Although the Cowboys will remain a 4-3 base defense, it sounds like they will be more multiple, running sub-packages — nickel and dime — 80 to 85 percent of the time. He also noted that some of the terminology was going to change.
It’s no secret that the Cowboys have struggled to force takeaways. McCarthy’s teams were among the best in the league in that department at different times in Green Bay. It’ll be interesting to see if Nolan will be more focused on the back end of the defense, similar to how Kris Richard was recently, giving more room to a veteran coach like Tomsula to handle the defensive line, similar to the way Marinelli handled the line in previous seasons.
“I feel like player acquisition and coaching instruction is a two-way street,” McCarthy said. “I think if you have a system of defense where you need a certain player to fit your scheme, you’re limiting your personnel department. We know what a Dallas Cowboys football player looks like; the length, the athletic ability. Let’s get as many good football players as we possibly can. It’s our job as coaches to make sure our scheme boundaries are plenty wide enough to fit any excellent football player into our program. That’s always been a philosophy of mine on offense and that’ll continue to be so on defense.”
4.) Upgrading the special teams unit. The Cowboys were one of the NFL’s worst teams in this area last season. Jones made it clear after the loss at New England that their special teams problems were on the coaches. Well, Dallas got one of the best in the business at coaching that area of the team. Fassel was the special teams coordinator in Oakland from 2008 to 2011 and then the special teams coordinator for the Rams from 2012 to 2019.
“I think it goes to the personality type that you’re looking for,” McCarthy said of what he was looking for in his coaching staff. “I think it’s important to have individuals that are the same guys every day. This is going to shock you, but I’m not expecting it to be smooth sailing all the way through. We have to make sure we have the right people that handle those adversity times because at the end of the day everything we do is about the locker room. It’s how the players are being coached, motivated, supported. And at the end of the day, that’s what will make our football team go. Just looking for consistent personalities and obviously, the best evaluation of that is if you do have former experience.”
5.) More emphasis on passing on first down. McCarthy never had a back like Ezekiel Elliott in Green Bay. He obviously had two of the game’s all-time great quarterbacks in Brett Favre and then Aaron Rodgers. He was known for throwing a high percentage on first down. Under Garrett, the Cowboys were more likely to run on first down, especially when DeMarco Murray and Elliott were competing for rushing titles. Even though it might not be a significant difference, it seems like a good bet that Dallas will be throwing more on first down in 2020. Elliott will continue to compete for rushing titles. McCarthy has said he believes a good running game is the best complement to Prescott. But it seems like a good bet that the running game is going to look a little different in McCarthy’s first season.
“I think you can’t just do one thing in this league,” McCarthy said. “I think that’s been proven over and over again. Obviously we have an exceptional offensive line, but the run and the normal down and distance runs and the action game need to fit together. That will be a focus. But the starting point will be the zone run. Everybody runs it, and we’ll run it as well as anybody. But pattern schemes, gap schemes, how it’s been communicated here in the past, that will definitely be part of what we do.”
Here’s where they will likely be similar.
1.) Veteran NFL head coach. Jason Garrett was criticized for not leaning more on analytics. Garrett used analytics, just not in-game. He believed in going with his gut and using his experience in the league as a bigger factor while making in-game decisions. I don’t think McCarthy will be all that different in that regard. He has made it known over the last year that he has been working to incorporate more analytics into his coaching style, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be leaning on them more than his own experience of being a successful, Super Bowl-winning head coach. And, frankly, no one will criticize any of those decisions as long as the Cowboys win.
2.) Overall offensive scheme. McCarthy said Thursday that the goal is for Moore to continue calling plays. If there was going to be a significant switch over to the West Coast offense that McCarthy had been using, the head coach would continue calling the plays like he did for almost his entire time in Green Bay. But McCarthy said what Prescott has done in Dallas’ offense is so important that he will adjust to the language the Cowboys have been using.
“This is the first language change that I’ve had to go through since 1989,” McCarthy said. “But this will be good for me, and frankly, it’s not about me.”
A key component to learning that offense was retaining Nussmeier, who has extensive experience in running offenses in college at Washington, Alabama, Michigan and Florida. He was also on Dallas’ staff last year. Perhaps Nussmeier will be able to make the transition process smoother if McCarthy needs a better understanding of something while Moore is installing the offense.
“Kellen was someone I was watching from afar,” McCarthy said, “regardless of what opportunity worked out for myself. The opportunity to work with Kellen was something I was going to pursue either way.”
3.) An ability to work with Jones. The Cowboys’ owner isn’t for every head coach. Garrett handled it in a way that others simply could not. McCarthy seems to be someone who will be able to allow Jones to say what he wants during the week or after games and not let it interfere with the message McCarthy is trying to get across to the team. Jimmy Johnson and Bill Parcells handled dealing with Jones differently than Garrett. McCarthy will likely handle it more like Garrett than the other two.
McCarthy was asked Thursday how much of a wrestling match it was with Jones regarding McCarthy picking his own coaching staff.
“To be honest with you, if that was the case in the past, I was not aware of it,” McCarthy said. “It wasn’t a conversation. We just talked more about culture and the program and how I view things and how we did it in Green Bay and how they’ve done it here. A lot of positive components in place, and I think it’s important for me to stay focused for me to try and utilize those. Everything we do will either be a change from the way they’ve done it before or it’s going to be an adjustment, but hopefully we’re building off all the good, positive things and we’re just emphasizing them. That’s the way I’ve approached it. I feel great about what’s in place already here.”
