During a 20-year run from 1966 to 1985, Tom Landry led the Dallas Cowboys to the playoffs 18 times. That stretch included two Super Bowl victories and 16 seasons of double-digit wins. After things fell apart, Jimmy Johnson got the train back on the tracks, guiding Dallas to two Super Bowls victories and three consecutive double-digit win seasons from 1991 to 1993. Barry Switzer followed that up with one Super Bowl victory and three consecutive double-digit win seasons from 1994 to 1996.
Since then, Dallas hasn’t come close to winning a Super Bowl. And from 1997 to 2020, the Cowboys failed to even put together consecutive double-digit win seasons. Mike McCarthy ended that streak by leading Dallas to three consecutive 12-win seasons from 2021 to 2023.
To some, that would seem to be enough to get McCarthy a contract extension. But that never happened, and on Monday the Cowboys announced that they have parted ways with their head coach.
How did things get to this point? Why didn’t things work out beyond the five-year deal McCarthy signed in January 2020?
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These four reasons top the list.
1. Wild-card loss to the Packers
Following a third consecutive 12-win season, the Cowboys were riding a 16-game home winning streak. They were the No. 2 seed playing the No. 7 seed Packers. They were favored by a touchdown. And not only did they get beat, 48-32, they were destroyed. Dallas was down 27-0 late in the first half and 48-16 midway through the fourth quarter. It’s one of the worst losses in franchise history when considering how talented the Cowboys were, how well they were playing at home and how badly they were defeated.
In previous seasons, the San Francisco 49ers were the team Dallas just couldn’t get past in the playoffs. The loss to Green Bay showed that the Cowboys were losing ground. The Packers were then defeated by the 49ers in the next round. The loss also seemed to have residual effects. Dallas opened the 2024 season by suffering five consecutive lopsided home losses in the first 11 weeks. It was stunning to see such a dominant team at home over a two-year stretch instantly turn into one of the league’s worst home teams. The Green Bay loss is one Jerry Jones brought up several times over the last year. It was obviously a tough one for him to get past.
2. Things got stale
And it particularly happened on offense. Despite opening this season with what seemed like an impressive road win over the Cleveland Browns, the Cowboys’ offense lacked creativity, had almost no run game and eroded into one of the worst in the league. It was a sharp decline, even before injuries to Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb. Dallas ended up 21st in scoring offense after ranking top five in each of the previous three seasons, which twice included being the NFL’s best. Jones has since second-guessed their plan of going into the season with two rookie starters on the offensive line. That obviously wasn’t aided by a poor plan to enter the season with a running back-by-committee approach. There’s too much money invested in Prescott and Lamb for Dallas not to have more success when both were on the field.
Even if McCarthy returned, major changes were needed on offense. And that could’ve been one of the biggest issues between McCarthy and Jones when discussing the future of the franchise last week.
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3. Overall lack of playoff success
There was more heartbreak than just the Green Bay loss last January. McCarthy was hired to get the Cowboys to a level that Jason Garrett couldn’t in the postseason. Jones was hoping for something similar to McCarthy’s start in Green Bay. He reached the NFC Championship Game in Year 2 and won the Super Bowl at AT&T Stadium in Year 5. McCarthy’s Packers were also a thorn in Jones’ side in 2014 and 2016, defeating two of Dallas’ top teams of the last 15 years in the playoffs.
But it just never happened for McCarthy in Dallas.
Garrett won one playoff game in his final five seasons. McCarthy leaves the Cowboys with only one playoff win in his five seasons. The 49ers looked a step ahead in both of their playoff wins over Dallas, in the wild-card round in 2021 and divisional round in 2022. The lone playoff win was an impressive one, dominating the host Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31-14 in the 2022 wild-card round. Tampa Bay was only an eight-win team, however. It was the final game of Tom Brady’s incredible career, and Prescott played one of the best games of his career. McCarthy danced with the team in the postgame locker room. But momentum quickly halted the very next week at San Francisco.
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4. Organizational dysfunction
Do the Cowboys put coaches in the best position to win big? It’s a franchise that has more distractions than most. Clearly it’s one still capable of having successful regular seasons and winning division championships, but something happens when the calendar shifts to January. Is that all on the head coach? It’ll be interesting to see the results of the next one in Dallas. No one should just assume things will get better. The next coach could certainly make the McCarthy era look better than it does at the moment.
“I thought Mike McCarthy would be the head coach, so this is a bit of a surprise for me today that he’s not going to be,” former Cowboys quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman said Monday on ESPN. “And what went into those conversations, I’m not exactly sure. But it suggests that there’s not a real plan. … As far as a coveted job, I don’t know that that is accurate. I do think the Cowboys are obviously a high-profile team and whoever is the head coach of that team is certainly going to draw a lot of attention, but I think most football people that take over as a head coach, they want to do it on their terms, and that’s hard to do.
“If you take Dan Campbell, for instance, is Dan Campbell (in Detroit) Dan Campbell if he’s with the Dallas Cowboys? It’s hard to imagine that he is. It’s hard to imagine that a lot of these coaches might be. I love the Dallas Cowboys. I played there for 12 years. I wish them well. But to say that it is a coveted job, I’m not sure I would necessarily agree with that.”
(Top photo of Dak Prescott: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
