Cowboys owner Jerry Jones issued a statement Wednesday night shortly after news broke that Mike McCarthy would return for a fifth season as the team’s head coach.
Here is the full body of the statement:
“I believe this team is very close and capable of achieving our ultimate goals, and the best step forward for us will be with Mike McCarthy as our head coach. There is great benefit to continuing the team’s progress under Mike’s leadership as our head coach. Specifically, there are many layers of success that have occurred this season as a result of Mike’s approach to leading the team, both with individual players and with our team collectively. Mike has the highest regular-season winning percentage of any head coach in Cowboys history, and we will dedicate ourselves, in partnership with him, to translating that into reaching our postseason goals. Certainly, Mike’s career has demonstrated postseason success at a high level, and we have great confidence that can continue.
Further, our loss on Sunday is shared by everyone here, not just Coach McCarthy. Our players. Our coaches. Our front office. Myself. There is accountability for our results. I am accountable for our results. The lens we use to view and evaluate Coach McCarthy is holistic. While we’re all disappointed with the result on Sunday and with our playoff record, I am 100 percent supportive of him as our head coach and ability to reach our goals.
We will start our process of review and decision-making regarding everything that impacts our team and roster and, while we’re not going to address specific players and extensions or free agents at this point, it deserves our deepest review and consideration, and it will get it.”
McCarthy, the ninth head coach in franchise history, does have the best winning percentage of all of them… by the slimmest of margins. His .627 mark is just two-thousandths of a percentage point better than Barry Switzer’s .625, compiled from 1994 to 1997.
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Of course, it’s worth pointing out that Switzer’s Cowboys went 5-2 in the postseason over his four-season tenure and won a Super Bowl; McCarthy’s Dallas teams now have a 1-3 playoff record over an equivalent three postseason berths.
McCarthy’s 42 regular-season wins are just two behind the 44 put up by Hall of Famer Jimmy Johnson over his five years with the club. He’ll presumably pass Johnson for third place in both wins and games coached for the Cowboys during the 2024 season.
McCarthy is expected to hold a press conference on Thursday, his annual end-of-season media address.
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