Tag: Mike McCarthy

For Dallas’ sake, Mike McCarthy’s year off had better yield more interesting results

The Cowboys went from Jason Garrett to Mike McCarthy. Only a drastic reinvention on McCarthy’s part will make that more than a lateral move.

Something interesting happened in the Dallas Cowboys’ 29-23 Week 14 overtime win over the Eagles in the 2018 season. Then-offensive coordinator Scott Linehan had called another of his seemingly endless stop route combinations, and receiver Amari Cooper wasn’t having it.

“It’s interesting because I actually had another stop route on that play and they were, if you were watching, really sitting on those stop routes,” Cooper said after the game. “And I was like, this is ridiculous. So when I broke the huddle I was kind of mad and I was like, Dak [Prescott], come on. And he was just like, just run it, bro. And I guess he thought about it again and he kind of signaled a go route and I was elated when he did that. And I took off, caught the ball, and scored.”

Here was the result.

When I saw the combination of quarterback and receiver working together to overcome the staid play-calling of their coaching staff, the first thing I thought was, “Boy, that sounds like what Aaron Rodgers should do more to free himself from Mike McCarthy.”

McCarthy, the Packers’ head coach from 2006 through the first 12 games of the 2018 season, was hired by the Cowboys to replace Jason Garrett, as FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer first reported. McCarthy had been fired by the Packers on December 2, 2018, after his team fell to 4-7-1 on the season, and hadn’t made the playoffs since the 2016 season. McCarthy enjoyed a 125-77-2 regular-season mark in Green Bay, adding a 10-8 postseason mark and a Super Bowl XLV win over the Steelers at the end of the 2010 season, but for a coach that had been so successful, McCarthy also found himself pilloried in many quarters for an offensive game plan — especially a passing game — that had grown more and more stale, and less and less effective.

Just as so many offensive coaches found themselves expanding their playbooks to counter an overall increase in the diversity and complexity of defensive personnel and coverages, McCarthy and his staff presented Aaron Rodgers with limited palettes of ideas. A Green Bay game plan that once looked like a perfect evolution of the West Coast Offense with everything from empty sets to full-house backfields became a dull repository for three-receiver sets, isolation routes, and the dreaded slant/flat combination McCarthy ran as if he received a pellet every time he did so. It’s something that first became apparent in the mid-2010s, and it never let up.

To his credit, though, McCarthy spent a year away from the NFL trying to re-think his approach. As he told Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network, the coach didn’t want to just jump back into the fray without looking at what went wrong.

“If you truly want to learn about yourself, you probably need to look at your last opportunity and keep an eye on it, because you have to be transparent,” McCarthy said. “You have to be honest about, how can you do things better? And it’s all part of this process. Once you get past the emotion — the negative emotion of it all — it’s a great opportunity to shine a bright light on it and grow.”

Thus was created “The McCarthy Project,” a collaboration between McCarthy and fellow coaches Jim Haslett, Frank Cignetti Jr. and Scott McCurley in which McCarthy pored over coaches’ tape and reached out to analytical visionaries — at one point, McCarthy spent a day at the Cincinnati offices of Pro Football Focus. The idea was to do everything from discussing how coaches like Andy Reid have implemented college concepts so successfully to figuring out which coverage concepts are most effective against which route combinations.

It’s all well and good if McCarthy really has re-invented himself, and will take that forward into his new gig. With Dak Prescott at quarterback, Ezekiel Elliott at running back, one of the NFL’s best offensive lines, and a receiver corps led by Cooper that can compete with most in the league, there will be no excuses if the offense doesn’t work. The same ineffective ideas that got Garrett canned could easily backfire on McCarthy if he doesn’t adapt. Throwing the tape and the analytics away when it’s third-and-9 and you go back to iso ad nauseam with a slant/flat chaser will put the Cowboys where they were throughout Garrett’s tenure — as a team whose talent could never quite overcome its coaching, no matter how hard it tried.

Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”

Mike McCarthy is the new head coach of the Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys have their man, as they’ve reportedly agreed to terms with the former Packers head coach.

The Dallas Cowboys appear to have their man. After interviewing only two candidates for their opening, the team seems to be on the verge of hiring their replacement for Jason Garrett.

That man appears to be former Green Bay Packers head coach and Super Bowl winner Mike McCarthy, who is informing other teams he interviewed with (Cleveland, New York) that he is out of the running for their positions. According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the two sides are currently in contract talks. and now according to Fox’s Jay Glazer the sides have agreed to terms.

Garrett was dismissed on Sunday night, after being in limbo for a week as reports circulated he was asking the Cowboys to keep him in mind until they found a suitable replacement. In comes McCarthy, who was scheduled to meet with Dallas on Thursday, but opted to wait until the weekend for his visit. His one-day visit turned into two and it was clear there was interest on both sides.

McCarthy comes with a Lombadri trophy and  West Coast offense, having worked with both Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. He sat out of football in 2019 after being removed by the Packers brass for failing to make the playoffs his final two years. He’s been to four NFC championship games and has a career .618 winning percentage.

The Cowboys also interviewed Marvin Lewis, former head man of Cincinnati. He may also be in line as a possible defensive coordinator, where he made his mark in Baltimore before rehabilitating a moribund Bengals franchise.

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Cowboys hiring former Packers coach Mike McCarthy

Former Packers coach Mike McCarthy will be the next coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

After a year out of the NFL, former Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy has landed a job as the next coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

According to Jay Glazer of FOX Sports, the Cowboys have agreed to terms with McCarthy and will officially announce the hiring later this week.

McCarthy interviewed in Dallas on Saturday and stayed in town to get the deal done.

McCarthy spent 13 years with the Packers, winning 125 regular-season games, 10 postseason games, six division titles and Super Bowl XLV. He will replace Jason Garrett, who spent nine years as the coach in Dallas but was let go by owner Jerry Jones after finishing 8-8 in 2019.

The Packers fired McCarthy three months into a disappointing 2018 season, ending the run of one of the franchise’s most successful coaches.

McCarthy, an offensive-minded coach, will inherit a talented football team with a veteran quarterback, Pro Bowlers at running back and receiver and a quality offensive line. He gives the Cowboys a veteran coach with experience and the potential to win immediately.

Perry Fewell interviewing for Panthers job on Wednesday

Panthers interim head coach Perry Fewell will get his interview with the team for the full-time job on Wednesday, according to a report by Josina Anderson at ESPN.

Panthers interim head coach Perry Fewell will get his interview with the team for the full-time job on Wednesday, according to a report by Josina Anderson at ESPN.

Fewell took over when Ron Rivera was fired after a Week 13 home loss to the Redskins, who subsequently hired Rivera. Carolina went 0-4 with Fewell over the next four games and got blown out in three of them, losing by 20 points to the Falcons and 32 points to the Colts and the Saints. The closest Fewell came to a victory was a 30-24 loss to the Seahawks Week 15.

Fewell is an excellent defensive backs coach, but based on the way December went, it’s tough to see him winning the position.

In addition to the team’s late-season struggles, Fewell has a ton of competition for the job. So far, the other candidates include Eric Bieniemy, Kevin Stefanski, Mike McCarthy, Josh McDaniels and Matt Rhule.

The Panthers aren’t the only team looking at those names, though. McCarthy has interviewed twice with Carolina, but he’s scheduled to interview with the Cowboys, who haven’t fired Jason Garrett yet for some strange reason only the Joneses could explain.

The Giants and Browns also have reported interest in the same candidates.

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Brett Favre: Mike McCarthy would be a good influence on Daniel Jones

Brett Favre believes Mike McCarthy would be a great influence on QB Daniel Jones if he landed the New York Giants head coaching job.

One of the main questions surrounding the firing of New York Giants head coach Pat Shurmur was how it would impact the growth and learning cycle of the team’s second-year franchise quarterback Daniel Jones.

Not to worry, says Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre. If the Giants decide to bring in former Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy, who they interviewed on Friday and is now slated to meet with the Dallas Cowboys, Jones will be in very capable hands.

“I think he’ll do a great job,” Favre said of McCarthy Friday on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “I had him in 1999, and that was basically the middle of my career, and after that year he was gone, but then he came back obviously as the head coach. And really a bright mind. Good for a quarterback. I think any young quarterback would like him.

“And he’s very understandable, much like Brian Daboll at Buffalo and Darrell Bevell [Lions], guys who are coaching right now, relate to the guys very well. And I think that’s important, on top of his X’s-and-O’s mentality. Obviously he’s had Aaron Rodgers, and that certainly helps. But I do think he brings a level of toughness but also a confidence that as a player, as a quarterback for him, you feel confident in the plays that he calls, that he’s going to call plays that cater more to your ability rather than maybe a previous guy he had. So I think he’s a simple but yet confidence-building and technique-driven coach. He’ll be a good fit for any of those teams.”

Jones may be just 22 but he is mature beyond his years. He understands the business of football and when a team isn’t successful, jobs are lost.

“It’s tough,” said Jones earlier this week after the tam announced they had fired Shurmur. “Obviously, that’s I guess part of the business and part of being at this level. But it’s tough on me, tough on all of us.”

Jones said he was ‘disappointed’ that he won’t get to work with the man who has meant so much to him so far in his young career.

“Coach obviously believed in me, Coach believed in all of us, and it’s disappointing,” said Jones. “I’m grateful to him for the opportunity. I think he’s an excellent football coach and I really appreciate what he’s done for us.”

Jones also said the the team, himself included, feel as if they let Shurmur down.

“It’s a tough deal, but everyone is responsible,” he said. “The players are very, very largely responsible for how this season has gone. I certainly feel responsible, and I think that’s the tough part. That’s the way we should feel and that’s the way it is. Everyone on this team feels that way. We have to use that to motivate us going into the offseason and make sure that we’re not in this position next year.”

As for who he would like to see occupy Shurmur’s office this season, Jones was smart enough to dodge that salvo.

“That’s not necessarily up to me and well above my pay grade. My job is to work as hard as I can to improve, to learn the system and work with the next coach,” he said.

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Mike McCarthy traveling to Dallas to meet with Cowboys about HC job

The first name has been attached to the Dallas Cowboys head coach opening, and it’s a man who defeated them regularly when it mattered.

It’s happening. For the last several weeks, former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy has sat atop Cowboys Wire’s potential replacement rankings for the Dallas Cowboys pending vacancy. While the club still has not relieved Jason Garrett of his duties, his contract expires on January 14 and the belief across the board is that he will be separated from the team he’s led for almost a full decade in short order.

The Cowboys have yet to make public any names they are considering as replacements, through announcement, confirmation or leak, and McCarthy is the first name since the end of the season to be directly linked to an interview.

McCarthy, 56, spent 13 years at the helm of the Packers from 2006 through 2018. That spanned the final crazy years of the Brett Favre era and being Aaron Rodgers only head coach until being replaced last offseason.

McCarthy led the Packers to nine playoff appearances in those 13 seasons, four NFC championship games, and Super Bowl XLV, in which they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-25. McCarthy was 10-8 in the playoffs and sports a career regular season winning percentage of .618 (125-77-2).

He spent the year away from football after being fired but has made it clear throughout the offseason he was interested in returning to the sideline.

Aside from interviewing with the Cleveland Browns about their opening following the removal of Freddie Kitchens, he has also already met with the New York Giants about their vacant position after the dismissal of Pat Shurmur.

During McCarthy’s final few seasons with the Packers, in which they finished 11-16-1 and failed to make the playoffs in either 2017 or 2018, there was plenty of scuttlebutt about discord between he and quarterback Aaron Rodgers, though both went to great lengths publicly to dispute those narratives.

It’s very possible that just like many other situations when a coach is with one team for a decade or more, that the two simply had enough of each other and the team needed a new voice while McCarthy needed a new roster.

As for his resume, he certainly checks off several boxes in what several owners may be looking for and that’s why he’s sat atop the last couple iterations of our rankings.

McCarthy is a consistent winner, and while his detractors like to point to him winning a lone Super Bowl with an all-time great quarterback for 10 years, that same logic isn’t applied to Don Shula’s time with Dan Marino, Tony Dungy’s time with Peyton Manning, or Sean Payton’s time (ongoing season excluded) with Drew Brees.

He’s also been on the winning end of a handful of playoff matches with Jason Garrett and emerged the victor. That fact isn’t likely lost on the Cowboys’ front office despite how McCarthy’s tenure ended in Green Bay.

Meanwhile, McCarthy spent the offseason studying the dynamic wave of change that has infiltrated the NFL, as he shared towards the end of the season with Peter King.

In the span of three meetings with the 56-year-old McCarthy in the tundra last week, one slide on his deck spoke volumes about where he’s at with the future. It’s his football tech plan.

There’s a flow chart for his proposed 14-person Football Technology Department, including a six-person video unit and an eight-person analytics team. The Chief of Football Technology tops the department, which will run both video and analytics. The top analytics lieutenants will be a Coordinator of Database Management, Coordinator of Football Analytics and Coordinator of Mathematical Innovation. Below them: Football Technology Engineer and two Football Technology Analysts. And finally, a Football Technology Intern. McCarthy spent a day last summer at Pro Football Focus offices in Cincinnati, discovering how much more data is available than he realized. PFF data will be a key component of his analytics tree, as will GPS tracking of players and Next Gen Stats.

McCarthy has spent the last 54 weeks breaking down the tendencies of opposing teams, gleaning what is working on a league-wide level down to the most micro details. Jones recently discussed his apprehension for going with a coach straight from the college ranks due to the fact they won’t be familiar with the rosters of the NFL.

Reading tea leaves, could what’s being reported as a failed attempt to find a front-office place for Jason Garrett have really been a plan to have him as an adviser to a college coach, as was speculated?

Of course, the Week 15 sit down with King was a well-planned effort to boost his signal as the season wore down. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; an older coach doing what is necessary to get himself to the top of wishlists in an era when the NFL wants to move to younger guys shows that he is at least aware of the landscape and willing to adjust as opposed to resting on his resume and reputation.

It appears Dallas is finally ready to move on to the next phase, and they have a loaded roster. Despite the issues that may or may not still exist with coaching a Jerry Jones owned team, the Cowboys boast one of the better rosters in the NFL. Led by quarterback Dak Prescott, the offense was one of the most impressive across the board and there is a lot to be said for a coach who has had a chance to review what went wrong.

The question is, will McCarthy be impressive enough in his pending interview to convince Dallas he can bring about the consistent performances he enjoyed in Wisconsin that have been missing in Texas.

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Giants interview Mike McCarthy for head coach role

The New York Giants confirmed their interview with Mike McCarthy.

The New York Giants interviewed former Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy for their vacant head coach role, the team announced Friday.

McCarthy is the second candidate to interview for the Giants head coaching role—the first was Dallas Cowboys assistant coach Kris Richard on Thursday.

It isn’t clear if the Giants are heavily considering McCarthy as a top candidate to replace Pat Shurmur. But he was one of the first candidates to interview for the job so the Giants wanted to make sure they got him in the building.

McCarthy has a long history as a coach in the NFL. He got his start in 1993 as the offensive quality control coordinator with the Kansas City Chiefs for two seasons and then held the role of quarterbacks coach until 1998.

McCarthy then joined the Packers coaching staff in 1999 as the quarterbacks coach before becoming the offensive coordiantor for the New Orleans Saints from 2000–2004. He also spent one season as the offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers in 2005.

McCarthy would rise to prominence though as the head coach of the Packers beginning in 2006. He held the role until he was fired in 2018 and accumulated a record of 125–77–2 (.618) in the regular season and 10-8 in the playoffs.

There are still a handful of candidates the Giants are slated to interview. The best case scenario is that the Giants get their head coach soon so they have enough time to get their staff together and begin preparing for the draft and free agency, but some of the candidates are with playoff teams so the deadline gets pushed back a bit.

Even so, the Giants continued their search for a new head coach by bringing in McCarthy on Friday.

Vote: Who should be the next Panthers head coach?

Vote in the poll below for who you’d like to coach the team in 2020.

The Panthers fired Ron Rivera with a month left in the season so they could get a head start on finding his replacement.

Now that we’ve entered playoff time, the search is progressing and we have a much clearer idea who is in the race to win the job. Here is a review of what we know about the search right now.

  • Former Packers coach Mike McCarthy is the candidate who has received the most attention. He has Super Bowl experience, shares Pittsburgh connections with team owner David Tepper and has already interviewed twice.
  • Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy interviewed with the team on Thursday. He comes from what has been a highly-successful Andy Reid coaching tree.
  • The team has also requested an interview with Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. They’re playing in the Wild Card round for a change, so he likely won’t be available to interview until New England is eliminated.
  • Carolina also has interest in Baylor coach Matt Rhule. No interview has been set up yet, though.
  • Early on, our preferred choice was Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman. However, he does not appear to be in the running.
  • There’s been some chatter that Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski is also in the mix. He’s in the same boat as Roman, though.
  • Interim coach Perry Fewell will also interview for the position.
  • Clemson’s co-offensive coordinator Tony Elliott reportedly turned down an interview request because he didn’t think it would be a legitimate one.
  • The Browns and Giants are also interested in the same top four candidates. The Cowboys haven’t pulled the trigger yet but are expected to let Jason Garrett go any minute and enter the market.

At the moment, we’re leaning towards Bieniemy. Let’s find out what the fans think. Vote in the poll below for who you’d like to coach the team in 2020.

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Giants head coaching search: Interview slate heating up

The New York Giants have at least four head coaching interviews line up over the coming days and several others in the works.

The New York Giants were granted permission to interview New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and special teams coordinator/wide receiver coach Joe Judge on Wednesday, but those interviews have not yet been scheduled.

However, four others have.

Here’s a quick look at the Giants’ current slate of interviews, which will all occur in the coming days:

  • Thursday: Dallas Cowboys Defensive Backs Coach/Passing Game Coordinator Kris Richard
  • Fridat: Former Green Bay Packers Head Coach Mike McCarthy
  • Saturday: Kansas City Chiefs Offensive Coordinator Eric Bieniemy
  • Saturday: Baltimore Ravens Defensive Coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale

In addition to those six head coaches (McDaniels and Judge included), there is rampant speculation that the Giants have interest in Baylor head coach Matt Rhule and view him as a favorite, but no official interview request has been made yet.

Rhule, whose Bears fell to the Georgia Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl on Wednesday night, has said he intends to leave for an offseason vacation with his family immediately.

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Report: Giants expected to interview Mike McCarthy

Add Mike McCarthy to the list of head coach candidates.

As the New York Giants continue their search for a new head coach, a familiar name will be added to the list of candidates as former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy is expected to get an interview for the vacant role.

Though he likely isn’t viewed as a top candidate for the head coach role in East Rutherford, it was expected that McCarthy was going to be one of the candidates that received an interview once Pat Shurmur was officially relieved of his duties.

McCarthy has a long history as a coach in the NFL. He got his start in 1993 as the offensive quality control coordinator with the Kansas City Chiefs for two seasons and then held the role of quarterbacks coach until 1998.

McCarthy then joined the Packers coaching staff in 1999 as the quarterbacks coach before becoming the offensive coordiantor for the New Orleans Saints from 2000–2004. He also spent one season as the offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers in 2005.

McCarthy would rise to prominence though as the head coach of the Packers beginning in 2006. He held the role until he was fired in 2018 and accumulated a record of 125–77–2 (.618) in the regular season and 10-8 in the playoffs.

He led the Packers to a Super Bowl XLV victory and was the head coach when the Giants defeated Green Bay in both trips to the Super Bowl in 2007 and 2011.

McCarthy is an established coach for the Giants to consider, and it seems he will get his chance to interview this weekend.