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By Jon Machota and Bob Sturm 2h ago
It’s that time of year again when Cowboys writers Jon Machota and Bob Sturm get together to have several conversations about the current state of the team. Despite a 12-5 regular season and an NFC East championship, the 2021 Cowboys season was certainly not a success. Dallas was the lone home team to lose in the wild-card round of this season’s NFL playoffs. With the season over, Machota and Sturm kick things off discussing two of the biggest topics and that’s owner and general manager Jerry Jones and head coach Mike McCarthy.
Machota: We know that McCarthy is remaining the Cowboys head coach for a third season. Since we’ve done several of these posts before, you probably have a good idea of where I’m at on this. I understand him getting a third year. That doesn’t mean I think he’s the answer for this Cowboys team. Obviously, he can prove me wrong, but there’s too much I’ve seen over the past two years to think Year 3 is going to be a lot different. Retaining Dan Quinn as defensive coordinator is significant. I didn’t think that would happen. I thought for sure he was getting a head coaching job somewhere else. So that gives me reason to think maybe they build off of the defensive turnaround they had this season. But I’m just not that confident that the 2022 season is going to be that much different than this last one. And if it goes that way again, I don’t see McCarthy getting a fourth year. Whether it’s fair or not, he has to have playoff success. That’s what he was brought in to do. Where do you stand on that?
Sturm: I think you’re onto something. I think it’s sort of the way the Cowboys machine operates right now. We’re in a spot where he’s now the latest guy on the chopping block in the Cowboys narrative, and he’s having a lot of stuff hung on his neck that existed before he got here. So I don’t know that it’s necessarily a righteous situation to be in that mix. I don’t know that it makes sense to put it on him, but he took the job. And when you take this job, there are two jobs that will forever be set up for blame until somebody can get them out of this wilderness, and that is Cowboys head coach and Cowboys quarterback. They both pay very well. And they both raise your visibility. But they also come with you getting blamed for the sins of Jason Garrett and Wade Phillips and Dave Campo and Bill Parcells. And in Dak Prescott’s case, the sins of Quincy Carter and Tony Romo. That’s what we’re up against if we see things from a much larger narrative, which I think is the only way people view things anymore. If we just focus now on this McCarthy era and what needs to happen next, I would say to you, Jon, that Mike McCarthy is at a crossroads where he needs to decide how he wants his story to be written. Because right now, it’s being written for him, I think. I guess the money still cashes, but I would like to see him grab the steering wheel. I do not like what appears to be, at least verbally, a passive approach to his coaching tenure, because he’s getting all the blame, so he might as well have a lot to do with the day-to-day operations that he seems somewhat withdrawn from. I don’t quite get that.
Machota: Well, let me ask you this: Do you think that’s because of Jerry Jones, and who Jerry is, and McCarthy didn’t have anything like that in Green Bay? Do you think that has changed the way he is coaching?
Sturm: Maybe, but I might suggest that there is a lot we don’t know about the way they initially agreed to work together. That weekend last January when McCarthy and Jerry had a great time, when McCarthy stayed the night at Jerry’s house, so they’re down in the living room and they’re having hot chocolate and they’re talking about this gig, Mike is getting all excited because the contract is going to be way bigger than probably what he had in Green Bay. And Jerry’s getting excited because this guy won a ring. And more importantly, this guy was the guy who was taking apart Garrett in these playoff games. And maybe even also beating you with Matt Flynn in a key regular-season game. I think that held a lot of water. But I also wonder about that agreement, especially as it pertains to Kellen Moore. The way it was coached, the way it was offered to us was that they were both way on board with Kellen Moore, and they might have been at the time. But it felt like a mutual decision at the time.
As I look back and I see McCarthy, who is an obsessive offensive mind — he wants everything to do with the offense. I remember in Green Bay, he never wants to give up play calling, he never wants to give up details, he doesn’t really want other cooks in the kitchen, he wants to boss the offense. Here it appears that he was very comfortable with Moore bossing the offense. Even when they needed answers, it felt like McCarthy was there and happy to be asked questions, but certainly not trying to position himself at a higher leverage spot. I almost wonder if that was agreed upon at the time because that’s my only explanation. It is not McCarthy’s nature to see his offense struggle and not try to grab the play sheet and fix it. And yet, he’s standing there and saying he wants to give Kellen space. He wants to give Kellen the ability to figure this out. That’s confusing to me. Do you think that that was an agreed-upon thing? If so, why would you hire Mike McCarthy in the first place?
Kellen Moore, left, and Mike McCarthy (Tim Heitman / USA Today)
Machota: I think he was hired because he has the resumé of a veteran coach who has consistently taken teams to the playoffs and won a Super Bowl. So Jerry probably wanted that CEO-type guy, but he also didn’t want to lose Kellen Moore. Jerry has been told by everyone how great of an offensive mind Moore is and that he’s going to be one of the next brilliant young offensive minds to get a head coaching opportunity, in a league that has put a premium on making young offensive minds head coaches. I think that factored in. Something that will be remembered for a long time if McCarthy doesn’t have success with the Cowboys is his line in his opening press conference: “I need to confess, I told Jerry I watched every play of the 2019 season, but I wanted the job. I haven’t watched every play of the season, but you do what you got to do, right?” When I hear something like that, I can certainly understand Jerry potentially telling McCarthy he wants him to be head coach, but he also wants to keep Kellen Moore. And I can see Mike saying he wants the job, so he’ll deal with that. He’s been coaching in the league a long time, he probably felt comfortable that he could manage that situation.
Another thing is that McCarthy has said from the start that he wants the offense being called by whoever is installing it. And that’s been Kellen Moore. So McCarthy doesn’t want to be constantly looking over Kellen’s shoulder because he probably didn’t like it when coaches did that to him earlier in his career. While that has to be appreciated, there have to be times where you step in when things go the way they did during the back half of the season. That wild-card loss to San Francisco wasn’t an outlier. We saw that building for several months. At some point, you’re sitting there saying, someone has to step in and change something because this isn’t working against any quality opponents. I guess I was foolish to believe that when they were playing the NFC East teams that they weren’t showing everything they had on offense because they didn’t need to. I thought we’d see new wrinkles in the San Francisco game, and that didn’t really happen. For me, I was kind of like, “So there’s nothing else left in the bag? This is it?”
Sturm: I agree with you. I think people will notice a shift in my tone because I was also waiting for the playoffs. I thought this is where we would see the benefits of McCarthy revealed. And I probably have to take my partial loss on that one because if this is what we were waiting for, that’s a real problem. That’s a discouraging reality. Back to what you said about them getting McCarthy to be a CEO, but he’s uncomfortable looking over anyone’s shoulder. What exactly is the difference between those two terms?
Machota: I think what it comes down to is that Jerry Jones wants everything. He wants the young up-and-coming coach in Moore. He wants the guy who has experience in McCarthy. He wants the accomplished defensive coordinator in Quinn. He wants it all and he can fit it all together. How many organizations are like that? I don’t necessarily think it’s the majority.
Sturm: No. I think readers get frustrated when ultimately guys like me end up back with Jerry Jones. What we want is Jerry and the Jones family to commit 100 percent to the plan of the man of their choosing. We were led to believe two years ago that that man is McCarthy, but we’re quickly finding out there were a number of reservations and addendums to that commitment. That reminds us of your Jason Garrett plan and your Bill Parcells plan and many of these other plans. If you are committed to McCarthy, fine, hire him. But then empower him to make every single change that he wishes to make. And that means releasing Ezekiel Elliott and who cares about the salary-cap implications if McCarthy feels OK with it. And if McCarthy feels Moore needs play calling taken away, then doggone it, I need you to do that. And the reason I need you to do that is I have empowered you that all this success or failure is going to land on your neck. That’s what this organization has needed for years. Before anybody thinks I’m sticking up for McCarthy, I would say fire him right now if you’re willing to hand all of that power to Quinn or Moore. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is what you just said: He wants to half commit to five guys at the same time and never fully commit to any one of them. That’s how he’s wired. From Day 1, back to Jimmy Johnson, and that’s why we never see the full machination or development of any one man’s product underneath him.
Machota: The one thing I wonder about with Jerry Jones’ involvement, and obviously I wasn’t covering the team in the 1990s, but I don’t buy that he’s more hands-on now than he was back when they were winning Super Bowls. I don’t understand why that can’t be overcome if that’s the biggest issue now. I get that Jimmy Johnson is no longer around and he gets most of the credit for that success, but it’s hard for me to watch old Cowboys games and Jerry’s on the sidelines, he’s in the locker room, he’s involved in everything. While I still think he’s doing a lot of that now, how were they able to overcome all of that back then and have all of that success? And since then, they haven’t even come close.
Sturm: Well, No. 1, nobody in the NFC has approached a dynasty since then. It’s not like they grow on trees. I believe there has been one NFC quarterback who has won even two Super Bowls since Troy Aikman.
Machota: I’m not even talking about a dynasty. I meant them just getting close to another Super Bowl appearance. Possibly just having a one-off season where things fall into place.
Sturm: My answer would be this, Jimmy Johnson and Bill Parcells are the two coaches he came closest to giving power to and in both cases, by Year 3, he was grabbing it back. By Year 4, they both pulled the parachute and wanted out. So I think that he is wired a certain way. And I think he defers to a few people who he really respects and then the list goes down to where he can work for a decade with Garrett, partly because Garrett gave into every single demand that Jerry ever made of him.
Tony Pollard and Ezekiel Elliott (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Machota: I guess the only thing I was getting at is I don’t expect them to have a dynasty. But as much blame as Jerry deserves and as easy as it is to blame him because he’s the one constant throughout this whole thing, he wasn’t the reason they lost in the divisional round in 2016. And I understand Joe Burrow is great and everything is rolling for Cincinnati right now, but I don’t look at that Bengals roster and go, “How could the Cowboys possibly compete with that this year?” Same with the 49ers. Is that Jerry Jones’ fault? This isn’t like the Lions where this team on paper isn’t even close to competing for a Super Bowl over the past 25 years. The Cowboys have had teams that could have at least made a run, had a one-off outlier season. And they haven’t come close to doing that. It’s just hard for me to put all the blame on Jerry for every single year.
Sturm: Yes, and this might be the disconnect. I’m not saying if Jerry Jones left and sold the team that they would start to win every year. I’m not saying that he’s the anchor that they cannot work around. What I’m saying is, in many of these cases, we see obvious things on the field that seem to have obvious answers and the reason the answer sometimes is not found or not used is because he has certain things, certain wishes that you can either fight him on or you can decide not to fight it at all. I guess my disappointment with McCarthy is that I sense he’s not fighting very hard for what he believes in. Because there’s no way the Mike McCarthy I watched for over a decade would continue to pound Elliott in there and continue to tell us that he’s a better answer than Tony Pollard. I just don’t believe his ability to evaluate the running back position, which he really believes in, would fall this fast. It feels way more like a typical Cowboys personnel decision over the years that has had way more to do with contract and popularity than it does to have the actual meritocracy of earning the spot in practice. These are what frustrate me, either I have a coach arguing with his bosses over something so basic as who should my starting running back be or more disappointing, I have a coach who is deferring on so many things that he might as well not even be the coach anymore.
Machota: The only thing I ask about that is then how do you explain Jaylon Smith getting released during the season? Jerry liked Jaylon, someone who loved that Cowboys spotlight. He got the contract. But the play was no longer on that level, so they parted ways. I believe Mike did and still does think Zeke has something to offer. If he didn’t, I don’t think he’d be out there as much. Because of the issues they had on the offensive lines and needing Zeke to help protect so often, I believe Mike thought that was their best bet at running back. And I’m certainly not saying they should have kept Jaylon Smith. We all saw he wasn’t that player anymore. But to completely release him kind of surprised me because that isn’t the typical Cowboys move.
Sturm: I agree, and I would say the difference with Jaylon I would have is I don’t sense that there is a friendship with the quarterback I have to navigate with Jaylon. That’s even weird to me. What I would say, and maybe this is a good spot for us to continue on next week, I need my head coach and my quarterback to take a little more control of their situation. My disappointment this week was with McCarthy. If you want to talk about disappointment with Dak Prescott on many similar topics, I think that would be well worth our time.
Machota: Absolutely. Let’s pick up with that next week.
