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By Jon Machota and Bob Sturm Jan 8, 2021
Mike McCarthy’s first season as Cowboys head coach ended with a 6-10 finish. Numerous key injuries prevented the offense from ever reaching its full potential, and a defensive scheme change during a pandemic proved to be a mistake.
To gain a better understanding of how things went in Year 1 of the McCarthy era, Jon Machota and Bob Sturm discussed what went right, what went wrong and where things could go in the near future.
Here is a transcript of their back-and-forth on several topics. The conversation has been edited for clarity.
Machota: Going into the 2020 season, there were high expectations for Mike McCarthy. Now that you got to see a full season of him as Cowboys head coach, what were your biggest takeaways?
Sturm: I would say through no fault of his own, the season and the transition was so blown up by COVID-19 and the shutdown that I really think we will probably look back on this as, generally, a lost season. Now, that’s not an excuse for butchering certain things in certain games. The biggest problem with the Cowboys’ transition was an elaborate change in philosophy on defense. And that consensus, I believe, was reached in January that we’ve got eight to nine months to put this together, to have a solid plan, to have minicamps and to have all these things under the heading of, ‘We are going to have an elaborate change to our defense.’ When that was all taken away … I really think they were too far down the road to turn back because of the moves they made in January and February. But they were also ill-prepared to start the season, and I think that showed. I really feel like they would’ve never tried that defensive transition this year had they known what was unknowable at the time.
Machota: I agree with that, and I agree with the fact that it’s only one year, and 6-10, it’s whatever. It might be an outlier. Obviously, he had success after his first season in Green Bay didn’t go well, and then a lot of success followed. I guess I would say my biggest concerns would be: Number one, in games, I thought he left a lot to be desired. I didn’t know a ton about him. I knew he had a lot of success in Green Bay, I saw a lot of their games and covered several he coached against the Cowboys. But in-game, I thought it was going to be better. That’s an area that concerned me from Week 1 to Week 17, some games more than others. The other one is it really concerned me that he had a full offseason, knowing he was going to be a head coach again, and he hired Mike Nolan as his defensive coordinator. If what you said about changing the defense was going to be so difficult, I think there would be a lot more excuses right now for that defensive coordinator if they felt they had the right guy. And I just don’t get that sense with Mike Nolan. I think they know they’re going to have to go in another direction on defense. And if they had hired a different defensive coordinator that a lot more people in the building felt confident about, there wouldn’t be talk of already replacing him after only one season. I just think that’s a huge swing and miss in your very first year at a position that, I believe, when you’re an offensive-minded head coach, your DC is your most important hire. That just doesn’t look good after Year 1.
Sturm: Who do you think they could’ve gotten last winter instead?
Machota: My issue there is I just don’t know enough about his entire background in terms of every other coach he’s worked with and others he’s close with. So I guess this is what I battle with. I thought when he was hired that he was going to bring in all guys that he worked with and had experience with, but then he kept Kellen Moore and said that Kellen was a guy he liked even before he took the Cowboys job. I don’t have an exact name, but there have to be guys in a similar position you would like over Mike Nolan, just going off the track record he’s had. There hasn’t been a lot of success there. I’m actually kind of surprised they didn’t go with Jim Haslett because they worked in the barn together. Not to say that would’ve been a lot better.
Sturm: Honestly, Haslett was the guy I expected that they would hire. I would love to know why that didn’t happen. But the problem with hiring a coach who is not coming directly from another gig, a lot of their staff has to go get jobs. These guys aren’t making millions a year. They need to work. They can’t wait for Coach McCarthy to emerge from the barn. They need to feed their families and put their kids through college immediately. So it dries up, and what you see often is a lot of staffs take a couple of years to fully assemble. Not uncommon in any way, shape or form to say, ‘Hey, I can’t get there in Year 1. but I can get there in Year 2.’ I’m not saying that’s the plan here. What I am saying is I didn’t like the Mike Nolan hire, but I did understand that there are a lot of times when you get hired as an individual and assistant coaches are getting picked over and under contract and unable to get out of their current gigs at the college or pro level, I wonder what his pie-in-the-sky plan might have been. Therefore, I agree that the Mike Nolan hire wasn’t great, but I still think the general bones of their defensive transition were going to go in this direction and will stay in this direction. Now, I could be wrong. But I do believe that they think Randy Gregory and Aldon Smith are fits for this scheme, and they think DeMarcus Lawrence can do either. They are going to continue down this road with their tweaks to coverage and things like that, and I don’t know that it’s dependent on Mike Nolan staying here. It’s a lost year, for sure. I just don’t know specifically if the defensive Year 1 growing pains won’t eventually serve some purpose in Year 2 or at least help them know who they can believe in on this roster and who they can’t believe in moving forward.
Machota: I look at some of the other coaches they have on staff, whether it be Jim Tomsula or Joe Philbin or John Fassel, and it just seems like a lot of those hires make sense. If they would’ve brought Mike Nolan in to be, like, the linebackers coach and maybe assistant defensive coordinator or something along those lines, but then had a younger defensive coordinator that was going to be the future, similar to Kellen Moore, I would’ve understood that a lot more. I thought it was somewhat surprising at the time, and his track record just isn’t great.
Sturm: Hey, you’re right about the track record. And any Green Bay fan will tell you that Dom Capers was there way too long and at times it felt like the defensive staff and having a great handle on things was more under the purview of Ted Thompson. Now, I can’t prove that, but there were times where Mike McCarthy was sort of an offensive version of Wade Phillips, which means, ‘I don’t totally care about the other side of the ball beyond my specialty.’ And that’s a problem. The positive for Mike McCarthy that I think got lost this year is, first of all, he can do great things with an offense with a competent quarterback. And that month of October totally doomed this team for a number of reasons that will probably not become issues any time soon again. But he does have a really good track record of running a locker room and having everybody accept a sort of next-man-up mentality, no excuses accepted and we’re not going to be outfought today in the streetfight. What happened between Week 5 and, really, the Minnesota game, was just so egregiously bad and such a series of unfortunate circumstances linked together that I think it clouds our vision of what this thing might be capable of in short order. I wonder if you buy that at all?
Machota: I guess I do to a certain extent. But my overarching take is that what I know of the Packers is watching it from afar and then the games I covered when the Cowboys played them. He was there for a long time and obviously won a Super Bowl. But after seeing one year here, if I’m only judging it on what I saw this year, I think he’s a better head coach than Jason Garrett, I just don’t know how much better, based on what I’ve seen. That’s what I’m left wondering. And I don’t think I’m alone on that.
Sturm: Well, you might not be alone, but I’ll tell you, he’s much better than Jason Garrett in terms of not accepting excuses and not letting any team bully his team. I think that gets lost in people’s fuzzy memories about Aaron Rodgers. But that team was in a ton of streetfights over the years, including against Jason Garrett’s teams, and they would never give an inch. Now, there were other times where the 49ers got the best of them, the Seahawks got the best of them, and those are two of the best bully teams of our lifetime, but I think overall the Green Bay Packers were both a physical team to play against for a lot of their rivals. And the second thing and most important thing is they never had a drop in determination because a couple of guys got hurt. Clearly, QB1 is its own animal. But I think Mike McCarthy’s greatest accomplishment is winning a Super Bowl with the highest number of players on injured reserve, I think in NFL history. Which is a weird stat to verify, but I believe it was absolutely true — a couple of years ago, at least. That team toughness and that unifying behind a cause is so important in this sport but also so undervalued if you can’t see it from the outside. And I just think that takes a couple of years to congeal.
Machota: I would say the biggest positive I take away from McCarthy’s first season with the Cowboys is he’s very aggressive on offense. He’s very aggressive on special teams, even though I question some of the decisions he made in regards to special teams during games this season. I think sometimes it was maybe too aggressive. But he was also very refreshing to see how aggressive he was, not only because it’s different from Jason Garrett but just the reality of where the NFL is now and where it’s going. That’s something I can really see them being able to build off going forward, and it seemed like the players really bought into that as well.
Sturm: There is a massive gulf between Garrett and McCarthy because Garrett is banging all of his timeouts down 24 points with a minute to go and driving everybody nuts because his conservatism put him in that spot, but then he’s acting like he’s fighting to the death. Whereas McCarthy will look bad when he goes all-in on a hand where he’s bluffing. And somebody is going to call your bluff; Washington did on Thanksgiving. And you’re going to look dumb. But give me a coach that is exhausting every possibility in the name of victory — and I believe in my bones that’s Mike McCarthy because I saw it for a dozen years. Now, sometimes gambling burns you. I mean, it’s not for everybody. In fact, I recommend very few people try to gamble for a living. But Mike McCarthy will do that. I’ll end with this. The thing that is important looking forward is just how much authority does he have to make the moves he feels he needs to make? I think that is the only way you’ll get 100 percent of the Mike McCarthy experience. He had to work with Ted Thompson, no question. But that is way different than having to work under the Jones family. He knew that. He took their money. He signed their contract, but I don’t know that he knew all of the little things that he might have his hands tied on. If he thinks, I don’t want to go into 2021 with, let’s say Jaylon Smith, let’s say Ezekiel Elliott, let’s say another year counting on Tyron Smith or who knows what he wants to do — can he do it? Or will the Jones family say, ‘No, you can’t do that one. We need you to make that work.’ That is where we will know if the honeymoon is either over completely or that this partnership can ultimately bear fruit.”
