FRISCO — Mike McCarthy greeted the Dallas Cowboys on Monday just like he has before the first game of every season with every team he has coached.

He laid out a 21-week plan that has them finishing in the Super Bowl.

“You have to have a plan and I have plans for 21 games,” McCarthy said matter-of-factly. “We have a 21-game plan, laid it out today in the team meeting, just the overview of it. It’s the way I’ve always done it.”  

Of course, it seems different heading into the 2024 season opener at the Cleveland Browns on Sunday.

With no guaranteed future beyond this season for McCarthy, who is in the final year of his contract, getting to the Super Bowl or at least the NFC title game is not only the goal, but it’s an unspoken requirement to keep his job.

Owner Jerry Jones hasn’t put those words in the air.

But his actions following last season’s embarrassing and still unfathomable 48-32 wild-card loss to the upstart Green Bay Packers spoke volumes. He didn’t give McCarthy a contract extension.

No coach in the NFL has won more than McCarthy of the last three seasons than Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs. Of course, Reid has two Super Bowl titles during that time period.

McCarthy has recorded 12-5 finishes in each of the past three seasons and has just one playoff win to show for it.

And he opens the 2024 with the Scarlett Letter of Green Bay painted on his backside.
Jones is as fond of McCarthy as any coach he’s had.

“He’s one of the one’s,” Jones said. “He relates to players and the players relate with him as well as anybody that I’ve been around, coach or otherwise, whether in my college or professional life. He has a special understanding of our pro game.  He’s certainly been schooled and indoctrinated in the NFL. He has very good credentials. He’s done it. I like his game day management. I personally am impressed with his game day management and he’s a very hard worker. He’s a Super Bowl winning coach, I can see why.”

But McCarthy has not come close to delivering on the Super Bowl hopes the Cowboys envisioned when they hired him to replace fired-favorite son Jason Garrett in 2020. Garrett took them to the playoffs and even won a playoff game.

McCarthy, with his credentials, was supposed to be better than Garrett.

So no matter how much Jones likes him, just like his seven predecessors, there is no guarantee he will always be in the family photo.

When asked at the start of training camp why he didn’t give McCarthy a contract extension, Jones uttered two words: “Green Bay.”

Jones ended camp with Green Bay still on his mind. And it’s not just Green Bay.

It’s the 28 years of futility since the Cowboys last Super Bowl title following the 1995 season and the piled on fan angst and frustration that is as palpable as it’s even been because of Green Bay.

“I admit this, the Green Bay thing,” Jones said in his office during the last week of training camp. “When we lost the Green Bay game, we basically had everybody say, ‘okay, what are you going to do about this? Okay, this wasn’t just a game. What are you going to do about this? And so it got the attention of everything we do.”

And that includes player contracts, which features more than 30 players in the last year of their deals. That includes the coaching staff led by McCarthy in the final years of their deals.

Jones started the offseason talking about being all in and ended training camp trying to weed out complacency and turning up the heat on his team, led by McCarthy.

“I don’t know that there’s any more urgency but I have tried to look at places that we are complacent or ways not to be complacent,” Jones said. “I’m looking for ways to make sure they can’t say that I’ve got some kind of structure that breeds complacency. It can be contracts. It can be conversations. It can be player decisions…But here’s the overall thing I have heard from fans with even more emotion, after the Green Bay game and still hearing from, ,you need to make some changes.’ And I’m still hearing it. I didn’t make many changes. But within the realm of not making changes, totally changing people out, I tried to turn up the heat on myself and everybody involved. And I think that’s what’s being discussed. I think that’s why the angst was there.”

Jones won’t change himself as he stated in uncut fashion to DLLS. So there is only so much heat can put on himself.

The brunt of it falls on McCarthy.

And it goes back to Green Bay and it begins anew with the Browns on Sunday.

“Everybody has stewed in what happened against Green Bay,” Jones said. “We will stew right up until probably kickoff against Cleveland.  Nobody is happy with anything. Now that doesn’t mean that you’re not happy with the work you get done on a given day, or happy with the work you’re doing. I think we’ve all put ourselves in an uneasy spot. And you guys in the media have helped us. Be uneasy. And I don’t know that we all deliberately set out to say our motto is, ‘don’t be comfortable, be uneasy,’  I don’t believe we’ve said that but boy to some degree we have done it.”

It goes without saying that McCarthy is in an uneasy spot. But as a coaching lifer, heading into his 18th season as a head coach, ranking 18th all-time in wins and third among active coaches, McCarthy knows it comes with the territory.

The reality is that all coaches are hired to be fired and it can happen with years left on a deal or in the final year of a deal.

And what’s also true is that McCarthy certainly hasn’t carried himself as a coach on the hot seat with the weight of the season hanging over his head.

He was affable, relatable and funny during training camp while navigating the contract situations of quarterback Prescott, then-hold out receiver CeeDee Lamb during the process of preparing his team for the season.

He is challenged to do his best every season. This is no different, even though the stakes are higher in the fifth and final season of his contract.

“This business is about opportunity,” McCarthy said. “I’m thankful and I appreciate the opportunity in front of me. That’s really how it’s been. I get what goes with contracts and I really don’t want to speak on it because I haven’t spoken on it because there’s really nothing to talk about. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is today…the only thing that truly pays the bills is winning games. That’s where my mind is at. I’m 30-plus years into this. We know how things work. I can’t stand up in front of a group of men and consistently on a daily basis demand that they focus their time and energy on winning and then I’m up here talking about things that have nothing to do with winning. I guess that’s how I deal with it.”

The biggest thing is putting a plan together and going to work. He has a 21-game plan that would land the Cowboys in the Super Bowl and ensure he keeps his job.

Considering the playoff futility of the past three seasons, let alone the past 28 for the Cowboys, it would seem like a pipe dream.

It is one that has come through before for McCarthy.

He certainly remembers that his fifth season with the Packers ended with a Super Bowl title.

“Good year,” McCarthy said with a smile. “Started very, very difficult. It’s all about the finish as I’m told.”

How will he finish in Dallas?

The journey to that answer begins Sunday in Cleveland. Will it end in Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans next February?