National Football League

Keeping Mike McCarthy was Cowboys' best move — like it or not

Updated Jan. 18, 2024 5:12 p.m. ET

Jerry Jones has always been a little more patient with his head coaches than he probably should be. He's often given them a year or two longer than anyone thought they reasonably deserved.

But that's not the case this time.

This time, Jones was right to do what he did on Wednesday night — announce that Mike McCarthy will return for his fifth season as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. It would've been easy to let him go after their disastrous, 48-32, first-round playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. It would've been a popular move among the Dallas fan base, too.

It just would've been wrong, because McCarthy is not to blame for the Cowboys' latest failure. He's not the one who built their one-dimensional offensive roster. He's not responsible for the defense that looked dazed and confused in the wild-card round. And firing him would've ignored all the progress he's made, particularly with a very good quarterback who might soon get a very lucrative new contract.

"I believe this team is very close and capable of achieving our ultimate goals and the best step forward for us will be with Mike McCarthy as our head coach," Jones said in his Wednesday night statement. "There is great benefit to continuing the team's progress under Mike's leadership as our head coach. Specifically, there are many layers of success that have occurred this season as a result of Mike's approach to leading the team, both with individual players and with our team collectively."

Understandably, very few Cowboys fans want to hear that right now — not when they're getting dangerous close to celebrating the 30th anniversary of their last trip to the Super Bowl (28 and counting)! For America's Team, for an 81-year-old owner and for an increasingly disillusioned fan base, there really is only one thing that matters.

And McCarthy's team fell short. That's particularly glaring given the who's who of coaches available on the market — like Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, Jim Harbaugh and Mike Vrabel, all of whom have taken a team to at least a conference championship in the last 10 years.

But there are important things the 60-year-old McCarthy did do this season, beyond just winning 12 regular season games for the third year in a row. In his first year calling the plays after firing his old offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, McCarthy worked wonders with quarterback Dak Prescott, helping him cut down his interceptions from 15 to 9 and put up MVP-caliber numbers (a 69.5 completion percentage, 4,516 yards and 36 touchdown passes).

Prescott loves the coach. He sounded stunned to hear McCarthy might get fired after the playoff loss. The two of them might have only scratched the surface of how good they can be together.

"He's been amazing," Prescott said. "I've had the season that I've had because of him. This team has had the success that they've had because of him. I understand it's about winning the Super Bowl. That's the standard of this league and damn sure the standard of this place. I get it."

But if McCarthy deserves to be fired, he added, "add me to the list, in that case."

Mike McCarthy to remain as Dallas Cowboys head coach — immediate reaction

Prescott isn't going anywhere, of course. And with an unsustainable salary cap hit of $59.45 million scheduled for him next season, he's probably going to end up with a new, long-term contract — maybe one that will carry the 30-year-old to the end of his career. The last thing Jones wants to do at his age is rebuild an offense around somebody else.

But that is what he'd be doing, in a sense, if he fired McCarthy. Any new coach would bring a new offensive system — which would be Prescott's third in three years. That's not a formula for building success. It's one for how to screw up an NFL quarterback.

That is why the best move all along was the status quo, no matter what the knee-jerk reaction was in Texas. Their best bet was to keep the McCarthy-Prescott tandem in place, let McCarthy coach out the final year of his contract and build a better team around them. They have spent two years without a viable second receiver, and it turned their passing attack into the Dak Prescott-CeeDee Lamb show. That reality was even more stark in the absence of a strong running game this year.

That's why the earliest sign that the Cowboys were done Sunday was in the first quarter when it was clear Prescott and Lamb, for some reason, weren't on the same page. McCarthy had nowhere else to turn.

So, they need more weapons — a running back to either complement or replace Tony Pollard and the No. 2 receiver they've been without since they foolishly traded away Amari Cooper two years ago. The Cowboys had the NFL's fifth-ranked offense and were the highest-scoring team in the league (29.9 points per game). Just imagine what McCarthy could have done if they had more than one weapon to use.

Yes, McCarthy has his flaws — starting with his 1-3 record in the playoffs with the Cowboys. It's also more than fair to point out that he only went 10-8 in the playoffs in 13 years in Green Bay with just one Super Bowl championship, even though he had a Hall of Fame-caliber quarterback (Aaron Rodgers or Brett Favre) every year he was there.

It's fine to blame him for that. He's never proven to be a big-time playoff coach, and he certainly didn't help that reputation Sunday. Then again, one major reason the Cowboys were blown out by the Packers was because their defense was a disaster. That's more on defensive coordinator Dan Quinn — yet he's still one of the hottest coaching candidates in the league.

McCarthy is held to a different standard, which is fine. It comes with the territory. But it doesn't erase everything he has done. That includes, as Jones was quick to point out, the highest regular-season winning percentage in Cowboys history — .627 (42-25). That includes 16 straight regular-season wins at home.

What needs to change for the Cowboys?

None of that is the "ultimate goal" the Cowboys want, but they are right to believe that under McCarthy they took a step in that direction and that next year, they can take more. Under McCarthy, they have become one of the powerhouse teams in the NFL. They were good and dangerous and for most of the season looked capable of winning a championship.

They didn't, and that's a problem. But as long as they're still pointed in the right direction, they might as well bring everyone back for one more run.

Ralph Vacchiano is the NFC East reporter for FOX Sports, covering the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.