Dallas City News

The Dallas Cowboys went into their bye week with plenty of questions. Literally. Mike McCarthy gave his players a list of questions aimed at identifying what the team needed to do better. One change that resulted from it was a larger emphasis on team drills in practice, with both Dak Prescott and Jourdan Lewis mentioning that some players weren’t working hard enough in the individual drills that took up much of practice time.

All in all, McCarthy’s theme coming out of the bye boiled down to effort and detail. Players weren’t playing hard enough and they weren’t fundamentally sound enough. And you’d need both to beat the 49ers, even with how banged up they were coming into Sunday night.

Right off the bat, it was the same ol’ Cowboys. Five plays, two of them being runs that were stopped for no gain, was all it took before Bryan Anger came out to punt. McCarthy admitted on Monday that the first drive was not very detailed.

Despite that, the Cowboys played with notably better effort, and they took an optimistic lead into halftime. Then, the lack of detail led to things unraveling in the second half.

Brandon Aubrey drew a penalty on the kickoff, San Francisco scored a touchdown in just five plays, Dak Prescott threw a terrible interception, and San Francisco scored again with a short field. Before too long, the Cowboys had gone from a 10-6 lead to a 27-10 deficit. Two big touchdowns in the fourth quarter when the 49ers were sitting back in coverage made the broadcast more interesting, but the Cowboys were cooked the moment that third quarter began.

So, too, is the Mike McCarthy era of the Dallas Cowboys.

Calling for someone to be fired is never a great look. At the end of the day, these are human beings with families and livelihoods. And, for the record, McCarthy isn’t going to be fired either way. Jerry Jones will simply let his contract expire following this season.

However, this game made it blatantly clear that the team as a whole is not listening to their head coach. McCarthy has been preaching effort, toughness, and fundamentals every single year he’s been in Dallas. And while he’s rarely gotten all three at the same time, he’s usually gotten enough to put forth some genuinely good football teams.

This year, he’s getting nothing from his players. Prescott, the MVP runner-up a year ago, has taken a huge step back. CeeDee Lamb is so hot and cold he should dress up as Katy Perry for Halloween. The defense, beset on all sides by crippling injuries, is flailing in the wind with no answers in sight.

What’s worse is that Sunday night’s postgame incident with Trevon Diggs made it clear who the players who are listening to instead of their head coach. Just two weeks ago, Jerry Jones went on a local radio show and threatened to fire the hosts for asking questions that were critical of him. He later doubled down on it and offered no apology.

Perhaps that’s what made Diggs feel comfortable with confronting reporter Mike Leslie outside of the locker room, still in pads and full uniform, shortly after the game ended. The image of Diggs going into the locker room, immediately opening up Twitter, and checking to see what people were saying about him is not at all how you want players to react after a tough loss. Confronting members of the media is an even worse look, though not something the owner has condemned. If anything, he’s condoned it.

It’s often said that the mark of a good coach and culture is when the players start sounding like their head coach. The Cowboys are doing the exact opposite of that, and if anything they sound more like their owner. That is an indictment of McCarthy’s ability to lead this team, fair or not, and makes the reality of the situation clear: this team needs new leadership.

Frankly, McCarthy doesn’t deserve this either. From the moment he arrived in Dallas, McCarthy has done nothing but work. His first season was a slog, marred by injuries and the pandemic, but he ended on a high note – winning four of his last five – and made the difficult decision to fire his longtime friend Mike Nolan after just one year on the job. Then, he stacked three straight 12-win seasons, something no coach has done in Dallas under Jerry Jones.

How was he rewarded? With a lame duck season that saw his two best players on offense hold out for deals until the bitter end while the owner refused, yet again, to meaningfully invest in upgrading the roster.

McCarthy has been undercut time and again during his tenure here, and he’s remained a class act through it all. Are there things he could’ve done better? Absolutely. But the failures of this era are born out of the owner’s ineptitude and/or neglect, even though they will ultimately be laid at McCarthy’s feet.

There was always going to come a time where Jerry being Jerry became too much for McCarthy to overcome. It even happened to Jimmy Johnson, who went out on his own terms, but at least won some rings along the way. McCarthy doesn’t seem likely to share that same fate, though, as his age of expiration as the head coach of the Cowboys seems to be just 10 weeks away now.