Dallas City News

You don’t have to be wearing a tinfoil hat to see that the Cowboys are entering a significant franchise overhaul. One of the signs is that Mike McCarthy is still here, avoiding a deserved termination and being allowed to coach out his contract. It shows that Dallas is more focused on dealing with their players and salary cap this year, content to let McCarthy achieve whatever he can with a less talented roster.

It’s almost April and the Cowboys still have a gross imbalance in their offseason comings and goings. Multiple starters and key backups are with new teams, others remain unsigned free agents, and Leighton Vander Esch retired due to medical concerns. Dallas has brought in veteran LB Eric Kendricks to fill that void, plus re-signed CB Jourdan Lewis for a key spot in the secondary. But other than some unsurprising, low-cost re-signings of RB Rico Dowdle, LS Trent Sieg, and special teamer C.J. Goodwin, the Cowboys have been mostly quiet in the first several waves of free agency.

Granted, there’s still plenty of offseason to go. The 2024 NFL Draft is about a month away, and there will be other free agent moves to make as veterans continue to sit on the open market, become June-1st cuts, or get otherwise discarded depending on how other teams’ drafts go. Dallas will undoubtedly fill the roster for next season, albeit mostly with players either past their primes or still trying to reach it.

The biggest concern is that even if they’re able to plug all the roster holes, the 2024 Cowboys won’t be any better than the last few iterations, And if that means another season of beating up on pedestrian teams, flirting with or even winning the NFC East, and then getting smoked again by a true contender in the playoffs. Most fans aren’t here for a repeat performance. They want more, and Dallas’ front office does as well.

This is where you have to start following the logic to see the big picture. If the Cowboys really still believed in Mike McCarthy, and QB Dak Prescott for that matter, wouldn’t they be doing everything possible to maximize their opportunities with those two leading the way? Wouldn’t Prescott already have a contract extension so that Dallas could have been aggressive in free agency?

When it comes to the head coach, wouldn’t McCarthy have been given a true vote of confidence, perhaps at least a two or three-year extension, instead of lame-duck status for 2024? Or if the team believes in its roster and not the head coach, wouldn’t it have made sense to boot him and see what someone like Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel, or some other big name from this year’s pool could have done with it?

No, the tea leaves say that this front office has lost faith in the current construction of the team. How far that goes, if it includes Prescott or not, is still undetermined. But their lack of activity says they’re focused on being a contender in the future with less salary cap constraints, using this offseason to begin to reset. They’re willing to accept an uninspiring, if not painful, 2024 season to help make it happen. And they’re also willing to just have McCarthy oversee the mess than bring in someone new and set them up to make a bad first impression.

We saw that from 2011-2013 with Jason Garrett. The situation was a little different in that Garrett was already here, the handpicked future coach of the team, and ascended to that role in an interim capacity in 2010. But while some star pieces were in place with Tony Romo, Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, and DeMarcus Ware, so much of the team needed to be overhauled from the Bill Parcells/Wade Phillips era.

Garrett inherited a major rebuild project with the offensive line and most of the defense. He gets mocked for the three-straight season of going 8-8 during that time, but some would argue that it was actually an accomplishment. Once at least the offensive line was up to snuff, the Cowboys had some of their best modern seasons in 2014 and 2016 despite ongoing defensive issues. But because of the rebuild years, the cloud of disappointment around Garrett was already thickening.

Perhaps Dallas’ front office is remembering that time now and not wanting to put the next guy through the same pain. If 2024 is going to start the darkness before the dawn, let Mike McCarthy finish out this final contract year. What have you got to lose? Why tarnish the next guy, and perhaps have your fans turn on him unfairly, for cleaning up someone else’s mess? The rebuild may take longer than a year, but at least the next guy doesn’t have to deal with the downturn.