The McCarthy Chronicles: Cowboys set their coach up to fail and it worked perfectly

Mike McCarthy has done himself no favors, but the Dallas Cowboys set him up to fail. Pretty unbelievable of a front office to do that to a head coach.

Everyone saw this coming. The moment that Jerry Jones said he was bringing Mike McCarthy back for the 2024 season, but would not be extending his contract beyond this year, everyone knew how it would end up.

Everyone, it seems, except for McCarthy.

The coach humbly took the stage in several media appearances throughout the draft process and dismissed the contract situation as a non-issue. He then brought on super-agent Don Yee – who has previously secured big contracts for the likes of Jim Harbaugh, Sean Payton, and the handsomely paid broadcaster Tom Brady – as his new representation. The move seemed like McCarthy betting on himself, positioning himself for a big payday after proving he deserves more years in Dallas.

Then the offseason came. Jerry and Stephen Jones waited as long as they could to extend the contracts of both Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb, ensuring that neither would have ample time to workout together in a team environment. The Cowboys once again took a conservative approach in free agency, not even bothering to make moves like they did when they traded for Brandin Cooks or Stephon Gilmore. And they pushed all their chips to the center on a rebuilt offensive line anchored by two rookies, neither of which would play the position they played in college.

Is it even remotely a surprise that the Cowboys sit at 3-5 right now? The team is, by Jones’ own admission, undergoing a soft rebuild this year and doing so with a lame-duck head coach that needs to achieve meaningful playoff success in order to stick around. But with the team McCarthy was given this year, he’ll be very lucky to even make the postseason.

In some ways, that makes Sunday’s narrow loss to a genuinely good Falcons team even more impressive. For the second week in a row, the Cowboys led at halftime. And for the third game in a row, the Cowboys made just enough mistakes in pivotal moments that, ultimately, ended up being their undoing.

When the team came out of the bye week, McCarthy highlighted details as the missing component. Dak Prescott and Jourdan Lewis agreed: too many players were coming up short on the details and not putting out the effort necessary to win games. Despite all the emphasis on this, the team has made no tangible improvements, and are 0-2 since the bye and owners of a three-game losing streak.

How much of this falls on the coaches? Surely, some portion of blame belongs there. But it’s hard to place all the blame on McCarthy or Zimmer or Fassel when you see Dalvin Cook not getting off the field before the offense breaks the huddle or Trevon Diggs making no attempt to go around an obvious pick play or C.J. Goodwin not coming back to the ball on a fake punt.

Speaking of Diggs, Zimmer had a characteristically blunt response when asked about the breakdown in coverage against Darnell Mooney:

At the end of the day, these are professional football players who get paid good money to play at the highest level of their sport. Coaches have a responsibility to teach their players and set them up for success, but the players are still the ones who have to make the plays. And in Dallas, there are far too many players who consistently prove they’re incapable of making plays right now.

The thing is McCarthy has proven what he can do at full strength. He won a Super Bowl in Green Bay and became the first coach in Cowboys history to post three straight 12-win seasons. He may not be the greatest head coach in the league, but suggesting that McCarthy is an outright bad coach is a pretty tough sell when you take history into consideration.

Perhaps a better coach would be able to overcome all the obstacles this front office has put in his way this year, though we’ll never know for sure. What we do know is that the aforementioned Jim Harbaugh went through a similar situation.

Harbaugh’s 49ers went 36-11-1 with three straight conference championship game appearances and a Super Bowl loss. But he entered his fourth season in the midst of a fairly public rift with his general manager (who currently runs the aggressively disappointing Jaguars for those keeping score at home). The cloud that hung over the organization led to an 8-8 season and Harbaugh’s dismissal after the season. Even Harbaugh, who just won a national championship while enduring the slog of a sign stealing investigation, wasn’t able to tune out the noise in 2014.

Now, 10 years later, McCarthy finds himself in a similar situation. He had his roster downgraded in the offseason with a long list of distractions all summer and, unsurprisingly, has stumbled out of the gate so far. When Dak Prescott was forced to check out of the game Sunday, a hamstring injury for which he’ll go on the injured reserve, it was just an exclamation point on what we already knew to be a lost season.

Looking at their schedule, Dallas could very well be 3-9 by the time Prescott is even eligible to return. They may beat the Giants on Thanksgiving, but they’ll almost definitely be underdogs for the next three weeks whether Cooper Rush or Trey Lance are under center. Jones will let McCarthy carry this season to full term, if only to skimp on paying his buyout, but we all know the truth.

McCarthy was set up to fail this year, and the plans laid by the Joneses worked out perfectly. Prescott’s injury only makes it more of a certainty that the team will be searching for a new head coach in three months time. McCarthy is far from blameless in the team’s failures over the past five years, but you’d be hard pressed to find a coach that could succeed in the conditions McCarthy has endured this season.