Mike McCarthy is unquestionably a no-nonsense guy. Maybe it stems from his upbringing in the Rust Belt, where he grew up surrounded by honest blue-collar folk. Perhaps it was honed by his long and storied tenure in Green Bay, where smalltown sensibility reigns with an entire swath of Midwesterners who tell it like it is across the nation’s heartland.
And maybe it’s part of why Cowboys fans are so optimistic. (Of course, McCarthy’s career .618 winning percentage as a head coach, nine playoff berths in 13 seasons, and Super Bowl ring don’t hurt, either.) But coming off a head coach who went out of his way to give generic non-answers to even the most cut-and-dry questions, Dallas has arguably been without the straight-shooting type for a while.
So forgive McCarthy for being brutally blunt when he’s asked about whether the team has a Super-Bowl-or-bust mentality one week into training camp.
“I think conversation like that, frankly, respectfully, is nonsense,” McCarthy said about such expectations, the kind that typically go unspoken in favor of one-game-at-a-time soundbites.
“If you’re not trying to win the Super Bowl, I don’t know what the… what you’re even doing in this business,” he continued, stopping himself from dropping an expletive in the middle of the sentence. “I think that’s what every team starts their offseason with. The ones that don’t want to talk about it, they’re just probably trying to underpromise [and] overachieve. But I’ve always been very up front about it with every team I’ve ever coached. We’re in this to win a championship. Make no bones about it.”
Go back and re-read that quote. It sounds a whole lot like something Jerry Jones, often dismissed as just a relentless hype man, would say. And has said, whether the squad was a legitimate contender or in obvious rebuilding mode.
The difference, of course, is that McCarthy is the guy charged with actually making it happen on the field. To borrow an analogy from another former Cowboys skipper, Jones has shopped for the groceries. Now it’s up to McCarthy to cook the meal.
And right now, the cook is still figuring out his ingredients. McCarthy pointed out that Friday’s practice would be just the sixth day of installing the coaching staff’s schemes.
Friday is Day 6 of install for the Cowboys. Mike McCarthy says you typically play your first preseason games after nine days of install.
So, fun as this first week has been, I’d imagine next week will get even better as guys get a better grasp of what they’re doing.
— David Helman (@HelmanDC) August 21, 2020
To put it another way, everyone knows that 2020 opening day is just 20 days away. But the reality is that, due to the late start thanks to COVID-19, the preseason prep has barely begun.
“The schedule ‘is what it is.’ I’m not a big fan of that statement, but we’re all in a pandemic,” McCarthy told reporters. “Every coach is coaching in this training camp environment. The players are doing a great job with the COVID challenge.
“It’s going to be a long, long year. It’s going to be a huge challenge to get that championship. That’s the reality of it. But at the end of the day, we’re on Install Six, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Make no bones about it.
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