'Excuse-Making' McCarthy Ripped By Ex-GM For Not Being Cowboys 'Battle Commander'
FRISCO - A former NFL general manager now working for ESPN is ripping Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy for his “really disappointing” State of the Cowboys address recently from here at The Star.
“I think his comments fell short,'' said Mike Tannenbaum on ESPN’s Get Up. "Jerry Jones hired a battlefield commander, not an excuse-maker.''
There are those who belief that 2020 was a sort of "lost season'' in Dallas and elsewhere in the NFL. The Cowboys could feel that way because of the Week 5 season-ending injury to QB Dak Prescott. As FOX analyst Troy Aikman told me, about the Cowboys and every other NFL coaching staff, maybe COVID earned them "a mulligan.''
Tannenbaum thinks differently.
“Why don’t we compare what happened in Washington?'' he said. "With everything going on with COVID, (head coach) Ron Rivera was a cancer survivor, they had four different quarterbacks start for them — and they won the NFC East. Ron Rivera, if he had opted out, nobody would’ve said anything. But he persevered and led his team to the playoffs.''
It's a valid point. Every other team had injuries. Every other team dealt with COVID. Teams still won divisions, went to the playoffs and advanced to the Super Bowl.
McCarthy's Cowboys went 6-10.
“I was disappointed by those comments. Obviously, they want to have a full offseason, have the quarterback at full health. They’re getting back a lot of players. I understand that. But you’re the head coach, and you want to lead without excuses. We’re in a performance business.”
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McCarthy's remark, reflecting on having been out of coaching in 2019 before taking the Dallas job - "What the hell did I come back to?'' the coach jokingly recalled thinking to himself - might've been among the comments that rubbed some the wrong way.
READ MORE: Coach McCarthy's 10 Biggest Cowboys Screw-Ups
However, McCarthy’s style, as a coach and a speaker, is fairly established now. The CoachSpeak - "We just didn’t get it done” - is how press conferences often work. I'm therefore not sure that this coach should be roasted for that.
McCarthy did say, at our same presser, “The pressure of adversity I have today is truly a privilege.'' Whether that is "battle commander'' talk, I do not know. But the spin of adversity into a positive, and the admission of the pressure of running "America's Team''? That all rings true.
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