McCarthy’s facing the eye of the storm.
The Dallas Cowboys’ Mike McCarthy will get one last crack next season to be the head coach of ‘America’s Team’, but he will be forced to look over his shoulder with no job security available to him.
The 60-year-old will go into next season as a lame duck coach and is not expected to be given a contract extension this offseason, according to ESPN’s NFL Insider Adam Schefter. McCarthy’s contract expires at the conclusion of the 2024-25 campaign, which could possibly mark the end of McCarthy’s tenure.
Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones believes the pressure and uncertainty of potential unemployment swirling around him is a great opportunity to produce better results from McCarthy, per Schefter.
McCarthy was brought on board to coach the Cowboys in January 2020. Since then, he has led the team to a 12-5 regular-season record in each of his last three seasons, capturing NFC East crowns in 2021 and 2023.
He has a 1-3 postseason record, recording his only playoff victory with the Cowboys in the 2022 season’s wild-card round against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in what turned out to be the final game of Brady’s 23-year career. Dallas made some unwanted history, becoming the first team in the Super Bowl era to win 12 games in three consecutive seasons without advancing to at least a conference title game.
Embed from Getty ImagesThree days after the Cowboys’ 48-32 unexpected loss to Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers in the wild-card round, Jones expressed 100% confidence in McCarthy and confirmed the coach would return. The longtime franchise owner, since 1989, expects McCarthy to win the Super Bowl his predecessor, Jason Garrett, who was also a lame duck coach twice in his nine-year stint with Dallas, could not.
McCarthy spoke at the Cowboys’ end-of-season press conference Thursday, and pleaded with fans to “buy into” quarterback Dak Prescott and the team. His other comments indicate that he already knew that nothing would be changed with his contract.
“I came here to win a championship,” he said. “I didn’t come here to get another contract or anything other than that. I came to Dallas to win a world championship.”
The Super Bowl dry spell in ‘Cowboy Nation’ has now reached an unbelievable 28 years. If McCarthy can some way, somehow bring the Cowboys to the mountain top in 2024, it will be his second ring and Lombardi Trophy. He won a Super Bowl in his fifth year as head coach with the Packers in 2011.
