Cowboys Retaining McCarthy as Head Coach

The Dallas Cowboys have made the stunning decision to run it back with Mike McCarthy.

McCarthy will be on the sideline for his fifth season as the head coach of the Cowboys, aka ‘America’s Team’, for the 2024 season, NFL Network Insider Tom Pelissero reported Wednesday night.

Seventy-two hours after the Cowboys’ shameful, uninspiring effort in a 48-32 wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers, McCarthy and his staff were conducting exit interviews with players, but McCarthy will not be exiting, stage left, prior to the 2024 campaign, which will be his fifth with the club and the last on his current contract.

Owner and general manager Jerry Jones had a closed door meeting with McCarthy on Wednesday after the coach had finished exit interviews with the players. Jones explained his decision in a statement:

“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. 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. Mike has the highest regular season winning percentage of any head coach in Cowboys history and we will dedicate ourselves, in partnership with him, to translating that into reaching our post season goals. Certainly, Mike’s career has demonstrated post season success at a high level, and we have great confidence that can continue.

“Further, our loss on Sunday is shared by everyone here, not just Coach McCarthy. Our players. Our coaches. Our front office. Myself. There is accountability for our results. I am accountable for our results. The lens we use to view and evaluate Coach McCarthy is holistic. While we’re all disappointed with the result on Sunday and with our playoff record, I am 100 percent supportive of him as our head coach and ability to reach our goals.

“We will start our process of review and decision making regarding everything that impacts our team and roster and, while we’re not going to address specific players and extensions or free agents at this point, it deserves our deepest review and consideration, and it will get it.”

As noted by Pelissero on NFL Total Access, Jones is synonymous for taking a step back to examine things after a season wraps and looking back at the regular season, Jones had not expressed any desire to make a switch at the helm.

McCarthy is 42-25 as the Cowboys’ head coach, including three consecutive 12-win seasons that included a pair of NFC East titles. However, the 60-year-old is 1-3 in the postseason and is the sixth straight Dallas head coach since Barry Switzer in 1995 to come up woefully short of leading the Cowboys past the Divisional Round.

That dubious streak continued with Sunday’s loss to Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers, but McCarthy will have at least one more opportunity to make things right in ‘Cowboy Nation’ and leading Dallas over its divisional hurdle.

However, there are more questions than answers when it comes to the staff, especially when it comes to the future of defensive coordinator Dan Quinn.

Quinn, the team’s defensive coordinator, has received interest from five different organizations with vacant head coaching jobs, the Carolina Panthers, Washington Commanders, Tennessee Titans, Los Angeles Chargers and Seattle Seahawks.. Also, McCarthy took over offensive coordinator duties in 2023 from Kellen Moore, who went to the Los Angeles Chargers. Success was enjoyed, for the most part, until the team’s playoff fall from grace. Will McCarthy be back as OC? It would seem likely after the team finished the year leading the league in points scored.

Signal caller Dak Prescott is also set to enter the final year of his four-year, $160 million deal in 2024. He has a no-trade clause in his contract and the Cowboys cannot slap the franchise tag on him in 2025. He is on track to count $59.4 million against the salary cap, the second-largest figure in the NFL.

Staff changes remain up in the air, but McCarthy will be back as the Cowboys’ head coach.