Cowboys 'Didn't Want Blood on Their Hands!' Why Didn't Jerry Fire Mike McCarthy?
FRISCO - What kept coach Mike McCarthy from paying the price for his Dallas Cowboys' humiliating 48-32 playoff loss to the underdog Packers? What kept him from getting fired by Jerry Jones?
Maybe the very same players who underperformed in that game ... and who are pretty much just as culpable as McCarthy himself.
“Players don’t always want that blood on their hands. They don’t. They don’t want to be the guy that’s known as the coach killer,'' former NFL scout Bryan Broaddus of 105.3 The Fan recently said on the Audacy original podcast “Love of the Star” “Generally, players don’t want to be the guy that comes out and says ‘We got to do something different. We need something different. We need to look at ourselves but maybe we need to look at the whole operation.''
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So in a sense, it seems, owner Jones and the front office included a "temperature-taking'' of the locker room into account when opting to retain the coach who has under his belt a Super Bowl win in Green Bay and three straight 12-5 seasons here ... all colored by a so-far inability to get Dallas over the postseason hump.
Said Broaddus of players' support for the coach: “I don’t think it hurt, Bobby. I don’t think it did. I think the players, they really really like Mike McCarthy. Even the hardened people in the organization that are like ‘We need to do something different,’ they like Mike McCarthy.”
That last line about "the hardened people'' at The Star suggests, of course, that the retention of McCarthy was indeed debated inside the building at some level.
Broaddus also pointed to that aforementioned Cowboys’ regular-season success under McCarthy.
“I just know that these teams that have continuity, they tend to do a pretty good job. And Dallas has won 36 games in the last three years. Mike McCarthy, if he was coaching in Carolina, Atlanta, Arizona they’d throw a damn parade for him with as many games as he’s won,” Broaddus said.
So true. Also true: Jerry's desire to make this thing work, long-term, with the people in place. From the day McCarthy arrived here four seasons ago, critics were calling it a mistake and itching for news of a successor. That phenomenon continues now with "Bill Belichick to Dallas'' gossip that simply won't go away.
Said Broaddus, mentioning Jerry lieutenants COO Stephen Jones and personnel boss Will McClay: “I kind of feel like they’re putting (McCarthy) out there, they’re like ‘OK, you got one more shot,’ but deep down inside, Stephen and Will are kind of hoping he sees this thing through and somehow gets an extension out of this.”
If it all works the way the Cowboys envision? McCarthy and the Cowboys in 2024 win big - Super Bowl-big. And McCarthy, presently on the final year of his contract, earns the extension.
And there is no blood on anybody's hands. Just Super Bowl rings.
