The Cowboys thought they were moving on from a ceiling. Instead, they may have walked straight into a mess.
Mike McCarthy is already making Dallas look worse for letting him go, and the sting only gets sharper because Brian Schottenheimer’s start has been so uneven. Through 25 games as Cowboys head coach, Schottenheimer is 10-14-1, and he has still only strung together back-to-back wins once. Jerry Jones, at least publicly, remains behind him, but the outside noise is getting louder after a disappointing opening to the season.
McCarthy, meanwhile, has landed in Pittsburgh and immediately found a groove. His Steelers are 6-2, sitting atop their division with Aaron Rodgers leading the way, and they look far closer to the postseason than Dallas does. In the simplest terms, McCarthy is winning the breakup.
That doesn’t mean the Cowboys were wrong to move on from him. At the time, the decision made sense.
McCarthy had delivered regular-season success, but the playoff results never matched the record. Any team serious about chasing a Super Bowl would have had to at least weigh a change.
The part that deserves the real second-guessing is what came next. Dallas replaced him with an internal promotion, and Schottenheimer always felt like a safe, uninspired choice.
That feeling hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten worse.
Yes, Schottenheimer can point to the offense. But that argument only carries so much weight when the unit was already a top-ten group under McCarthy with Dak Prescott healthy. The production hasn’t exactly been some dramatic reinvention.
The Cowboys’ coaching search after McCarthy also never came off as especially ambitious. While Ben Johnson and Liam Coen landed elsewhere, Dallas’ list was headlined by Deion Sanders, Pete Carroll, Robert Saleh, and Leslie Frazier. If those were the best options on the table, the argument for keeping McCarthy gets a lot stronger.
And now McCarthy is in a new place, building a competent Steelers team, which is more than Schottenheimer can claim right now. With a little hindsight, the move away from McCarthy looks less like a reset and more like a step backward.
Still, there’s one thing McCarthy hasn’t solved yet, and Cowboys fans know it well: January. He never got the playoff monkey off his back in Dallas, and that’s the reason the breakup happened in the first place. He won 12 games in three straight seasons there, but only managed one playoff win in that span.
So yes, Dallas can keep pointing to that history and defending the decision. But if McCarthy keeps this up in Pittsburgh and turns that regular-season start into a playoff run, the Cowboys’ regret is only going to get louder.
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Quinnen Williams Sounds Off As Cowboys Defense Hits Breaking Point
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Cowboys Secondary Is Already Emerging As A Long Term Draft Priority
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Robinson has put together a strong college rsum and would give the Cowboys a young corner with the kind of upside teams covet when they start thinking beyond the current roster. The fit becomes even more interesting if Dallas eventually decides to move on from DaRon Bland, which would leave a clear opening for another long-term piece in a secondary that needs more stability. [Read more 🡒]
Colts Land In A Week 9 Spot With Bigger Stakes Than Expected
Dallas entered November at 3-5 after a loss to the Arizona Cardinals, and the margin for error has all but disappeared as the schedule turns to the Colts in Week 9. DraftKings Sportsbook has Dallas favored by six points, which only sharpens the pressure around a game that feels bigger than a typical midseason matchup for a team trying to steady itself and keep its season from drifting further off course.
The stakes go beyond one result on Sunday. Depending on how this one plays out, the Cowboys could be forced to make some hard decisions before the trade deadline, with the front office weighing whether to stand pat or make a move to try to salvage the season. For a team already in must-win territory, the Colts are arriving at a moment when the ripple effects could reach well past the final score. [Read more 🡒]