The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly side of Mike McCarthy

The hiring of Mike McCarthy as the new head coach of the Dallas Cowboys has been mostly well received by fans of the team. The end of the Jason Garrett era was long overdue and a change was badly needed. Mike McCarthy was not my first choice as the new hire but I can certainly get on board with him given his resume; provided that. if it doesn’t work out the Cowboys don’t take another 10 years to move on from him like they did with Garrett. There are some things to be excited about by bringing in Mike McCarthy to coach the Dallas Cowboys but there are also some concerns. The following is the good, the bad, and the ugly with regards to Mike McCarthy as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

THE GOOD

As mentioned previously, Mike McCarthy has an impressive resume through his 13 seasons in Green Bay. He was a better winning pct (.618%) than Jason Garrett (.559%). Has more division titles (6 to 3), more playoff appearances (9 to 3), and a better record in the playoffs as well (10-8 compared to 2-3). McCarthy has led his teams to the NFC Championship game on three occasions and has won a Super Bowl. Jason Garrett has not accomplished any of those feats. Based on his resume alone, Mike McCarthy is a major upgrade over Jason Garrett. Furthermore, the fact that he is not Jason Garrett. That a change was made and a new voice will be heard in itself is a good thing since the Jason Garrett era had clearly gotten stale. With the head coaching change, Mike McCarthy is bringing about a lot of changes on the rest of the coaching staff as well. Most notable among those changes was Mike Nolan as defensive coordinator, John Fassel as special teams coach, Jim Tomsula as defensive line coach, and Joe Philbin as offensive line coach, He has retained Kellen Moore as offensive coordinator and shifted Doug Nussmeier from tight ends coach to quarterbacks coach. The coaching staff was in dire need of a shake up and Mike McCarthy brought in guys that should help improve special teams play and focus on creating more turnovers defensively. On the offensive side of the ball, McCarthy plans to keep some of the previous offense in place while implementing west coast principles which is what he is familiar with. Finally, another positive with this hire is that Mike McCarthy is familiar with the pressure of coaching for an iconic organization with limited control which is exactly what he can expect in Dallas.

THE BAD

Hiring Mike McCarthy is not a slam dunk guarantee. In fact, no one other than maybe Bill Belichick would fit that description. There are some concerns with hiring Mike McCarthy to coach the Dallas Cowboys. Primarily, the fact that he was available. He only became available because he was fired midseason in 2018 and was unemployed in 2019. The popular opinion regarding Mike McCarthy is that he had become stale and stubborn which manifested itself with 2 straight losing seasons in Green Bay. Although Mike McCarthy claims to have learned lessons during his time off and plans to be a better coach in 2020, that remains to be proven. Fans of the Dallas Cowboys are well aware that talk is cheap and we have heard our fair share of guarantees and promises by players and other people within the organisation in the last 25 years with nothing to show for it. The other major concern with Mike McCarthy is that although he won a Super Bowl, he did it with a future Hall of Fame quarterback who has the ability to take over games. Now that he has departed from Green Bay, the team went from 6 wins in 2018 to 13 wins and playing in the NFC Championship game this Sunday. Mike McCarthy will have to prove that he can win without Aaron Rodgers since Aaron Rodgers has already proven that he can win without Mike McCarthy.

THE UGLY

Often when a team parts ways with players or a head coach some stuff starts to come out that might have been swept under the table when things were going well. That is what happened in Green Bay after Mike McCarthy was fired. There were reports about the dysfunctional relationship between McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers. There was also reports about Mike McCarthy getting massages while the rest of the team was engaged in meetings. The extent of the how bad things got with Mike McCarthy in Green Bay can be summed up with this article from the Bleacher Report. The concern for Dallas Cowboys fans is that the behavior and incompetencies described in that article would be amplified in Dallas, the home of “America’s Team”. Compound that with the fact that the Jones’s seem to be enamored with Mike McCarthy. If Mike McCarthy can rub elbows with Jerry Jones and get the same vote of confidence and blind faith that Jason Garrett received it could spell another decade of failure for the Dallas Cowboys.

VERDICT

As for now, the jury is out on whether this was the right hire or not. The future will determine what the Dallas Cowboys get out of Mike McCarthy, the good, the bad, or the ugly. My hope is that they have learned from the Jason Garrett era and will have a shorter leash on Mike McCarthy. As for Mike, although he was not my first choice, I choose to approach his tenure with an open mind and hope for the best.

*Photo by Joe Glorioso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode

**All Data and Statistics obtained and verified from https://www.pro-football-reference.com/