Mike McCarthy hosted his annual end-of-season press conference on Thursday, secure in the knowledge that he would remain the Cowboys head coach for 2024.
That in and of itself is enough to have a significant faction of Cowboys Nation expecting his fifth season with the club to bring more of the same: regular-season fireworks followed by a big fat postseason dud. While the 60-year-old coach repeatedly used words like “raw” and “numb” and “emotional” to describe his feelings about how the team’s latest promising season went up in flames in the early rounds of the playoffs, McCarthy was clear about one thing.
“The reality of it is, this team’s going to change,” McCarthy said. “We’re going to have changes.”
As for what exactly those changes might look like, though, it’s too early in the offseason evaluation process for McCarthy to say.
“We’re just getting started,” he vowed.
Many — and perhaps most –– observers believed Sunday’s embarrassing blowout at the hands of the Packers in the wild-card round would instead be the ending to McCarthy’s tenure in Dallas. The 48-32 home loss marked the third January in a row that saw the Cowboys fail to reach the conference championship and extended the franchise’s Super Bowl drought to 28 years.
And while McCarthy asserted that he and his players “take no responsibility” for the shortcomings of Cowboys squads from past eras, he had a message for supporters who will now have no choice but to continue to look to his group to end a wait that’s closing in on three decades.
“We have an unbelievable fan base, and they should be frustrated. We’re extremely disappointed. Disappointed for them, disappointed in our performance,” McCarthy said.
“But my message would be this: We’ve established a championship program. It’s just not the world championship yet. We know how to win, we know how to train to win, we have the right people, but we have not crossed the threshold [of] winning playoff games. It’s extremely disappointing to sit here talking about it. But I know how to win, and we will get over that threshold. I have total confidence, and that’s why I’m standing here today.”
Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said he didn’t come to Dallas to receive a second contract. “I came here to win a championship.” Reiterated his belief he and the team can. pic.twitter.com/lBNoxqEwLL
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) January 18, 2024
Jerry Jones had commented that Sunday’s wild-card loss was as shocking a setback as he can remember in his ownership, prompting widespread rumors that McCarthy would be relieved of his duties – even with a year remaining on his contract — in favor of one of the high-profile coaching candidates currently on the open market.
In a statement delivered Wednesday evening that followed reports McCarthy would remain in place, Jones said he had “great confidence” in McCarthy, citing his regular-season winning percentage (higher than any of his eight predecessors, by .002 of a point) as the reason why “the best step forward” for the organization is to continue “the team’s progress under Mike’s leadership.”
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The coach characterized his three-hour meeting with Jones on Wednesday as productive and wide-ranging. And while he conceded there were “hard, direct questions” from his 81-year-old billionaire boss, McCarthy suggested that he never felt he had to go into that conversation fighting to keep his job.
“We talked about everything: the right, the wrong, the indifferent, what we need to build off of. I don’t know if there’s much we didn’t talk about, as far as topics that apply to the football operation. Hard conversation, definitely, throughout a number of points here, but they’re conversations that I personally always look forward to. I’ve never walked out of a one-on-one with Jerry where I didn’t think I was better, one way or the other.”
McCarthy may feel better about his standing with the Cowboys now that his fifth season on the job is secure, but Cowboys fans will likely need a bit more convincing that the team can be better with him still at the helm.
McCarthy talked about having established “a championship program … just not the world championship yet.”
Problem is, that second kind is the only one that anybody really cares about.
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