I’m making the call right now: Mike McCarthy will be back next season as the coach of the Cowboys. He shouldn’t be. Of course not. But Jerry’s painted himself into such a corner now, he really doesn’t have a choice.

If I had told you before the 2020 season that in five years as the Cowboys coach, McCarthy’s record would be 49-35, with two seasons of double-digit losses, and the team still would not have won a divisional playoff game, would you view that as a success? No. Neither would Jerry. He brought McCarthy in to win playoff games and compete for Super Bowls. But his five years look almost exactly like Jason Garrett’s last four years: 40-24, with no divisional playoff wins.

Nothing’s changed.

The problem here is Jerry Wayne. We all know this. But Jerry’s not going anywhere, so we talk about the coaches.

Jerry has spent all his money on two players: Dak and Lamb. In the next couple of months, whatever’s left of his money will go to Micah Parsons. He’s bet everything on this trio of superstars getting him to the Promised Land, but the window is quickly closing. The surgically repaired Prescott is entering his tenth season as the Cowboys quarterback. Firing McCarthy and bringing in a brand new coach with a brand new staff and a brand new scheme would mean starting over with a two or three year process and Jerry simply doesn’t have that much time. Giving NFL record-money to an oft-injured 31-year-old quarterback who’s never won a divisional playoff game wasn’t smart. But he’s stuck with him now and running it back with McCarthy is his only choice.

Plus, he can keep McCarthy for cheap. McCarthy is reportedly making $8-million per season, about half of what their teams pay Sean Payton, Mike Tomlin, Jim Harbaugh, and Sean McVay. With no other teams lining up to sign McCarthy, Jerry can leverage his coach into the middle of the pay scale and save money to sign Parsons.

I’m not sure how you excite the fan base for 2025 by bringing McCarthy back, especially when we know, because of the money crunch, it’ll be another offseason of limited free agent signings. This really is going to be a “run it back” and hope all your guys who are one year older won’t get hurt again. Again.

I did about five minutes of research this morning that resulted in a sobering truth. In the first 29 years of the franchise, when Landry and Tex Schramm ran the whole operation and the owner stayed in the background, the Cowboys suffered only three seasons of double-digit losses. That first 0-11-1 season when Dallas played without the benefit of a draft, the fourth season in franchise history, and Landry’s last in 1988–three times in 29-years. It’s been 29-years since the Cowboys won a divisional playoff game. During that time, Dallas has racked up a whopping nine seasons of double-digit losses and McCarthy has presided over two of them. The current General Manager has overseen all nine of them.

Jerry only knows how to sign two kinds of coaches: unemployed ones and ones from within the organization. He has no desire to gamble on a dynamic name from another team or to participate in a bidding war for the next young hotshot coordinator. Not that it matters. The coach is not the issue in Dallas. For three decades now, the coach is not the problem. So, yeah, Jerry, you’ve been talking yourself into it now for two months. Run it back.

Peace,

Allan