By Saad Yousuf, Jon Machota, Dianna Russini and Cale Clinton
Mike McCarthy won’t return as Dallas Cowboys coach in 2025, a team source said, as the team will move in a new direction after five seasons with the one-time Super Bowl-winning coach at the helm.
McCarthy’s contract officially expires Tuesday. The move comes after McCarthy and the Cowboys missed the playoffs for the first time since his inaugural season in 2020.
After a one-year hiatus following his dismissal from the Green Bay Packers, McCarthy joined the Cowboys as their ninth coach in franchise history. The main pitch McCarthy reportedly provided Cowboys ownership was that he spent his year off grinding tape and learning analytics. He immediately spoiled that during his introductory news conference by admitting he might have been over-selling himself to the Jones family, adding: “I wanted the job. You do what you gotta do, right?”
Regardless of the interview fib, McCarthy saw solid success when having a complete team around him. In seasons in which Dak Prescott was healthy, McCarthy consistently led some of the best regular-season teams in the NFL. With a record of 49-35, McCarthy ends his tenure in Dallas with the fourth-highest regular-season win percentage (59.8 percent) in Cowboys history. The issue McCarthy consistently ran into, however, was advancing in the playoffs. He ends his Cowboys tenure with a 1-3 postseason record, continuing the Cowboys’ now-29-year streak of not making a conference championship game.
McCarthy’s inaugural 2020 season was all but lost just five weeks into the season when Prescott dislocated his ankle in the fifth game of the season. Andy Dalton, Prescott’s backup, also suffered a concussion and missed time with a positive COVID test. McCarthy and the Cowboys finished 6-10 amid the quarterback carousel.
Over the next three seasons, the Cowboys dominated at full strength. Dallas finished each of the next three seasons 12-5, winning two NFC East titles and leading the league in scoring twice.
Dallas consistently built great teams around McCarthy during their three-year peak between 2021 and 2023. In McCarthy’s inaugural 2020 season, the Cowboys secured cornerstones on both sides of the ball with their top two picks in CeeDee Lamb and Trevon Diggs. The following year, Dallas landed Micah Parsons 12th overall. The Cowboys also consistently refreshed their offensive line well, adding Tyler Biadasz and Tyler Smith, as well as Tyler Guyton and Cooper Beebe in the 2024 draft. Dallas also consistently spent on veteran players. The Cowboys took swings on the free-agent market for veterans like Gerald McCoy, Jayron Kearse and Carl Lawson to bolster their defense. They paid up in trades for players like wide receiver Brandin Cooks and cornerback Stephon Gilmore to fill gaps where needed.
The McCarthy era was also very open to change on the coaching staff. After the 2020 season, McCarthy quickly moved on from Mike Nolan in favor of Dan Quinn. The Cowboys jumped from 27th to fourth in defensive DVOA during Quinn’s first season. Quinn posted three straight seasons of top-five defensive DVOA performances before taking a head-coaching job in Washington this past season. McCarthy retained Kellen Moore as his offensive coordinator upon joining the staff in 2020. Moore posted a top-five offensive DVOA in 2021 once Prescott was healthy, but a downturn in 2022 led to Moore’s firing. McCarthy hired Brian Schottenheimer and reclaimed play-calling duties for himself, returning to the precedent set in his Green Bay days. The Cowboys finished ninth in offensive DVOA in McCarthy’s first season as play-caller before falling back to 26th in 2024.
While the Cowboys had ample help and some elite seasons as a team, McCarthy was never able to get over the hump in the postseason. Dallas came up short of the conference championship in each of their three playoff appearances despite finishing as a top-three-seeded team twice in that span. Two of Dallas’ postseason losses came at AT&T Stadium, and Dallas’ lone postseason win under McCarthy came as a wild-card team against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won their division with an 8-9 record.
What went wrong?
Before McCarthy, the Cowboys had gone through high win totals, followed by quick playoff exits. Wade Phillips did that in 2007 with a 13-win, one-and-done team. Jason Garrett did the same in 2016, with another 13-win squad. The 2014 bunch won 12 games and a playoff game but still didn’t reach the conference title game. Other Cowboys teams preceding McCarthy had flirted with the playoffs fairly routinely.
The standard was clearly set for McCarthy when he took the job in 2020: Win playoff games. Plural.
In the end, that standard was not met. There are plenty of excuses for things going off the rails this year, just as there were in 2020. In both cases, injuries top the list. However, there are three years in the middle in which there’s one playoff win combined to show for. Ultimately, that’s what crushes the case for the Cowboys to extend McCarthy and allow him to continue to build upon the culture he’s established.
While the 2021 and 2022 playoff exits to the San Francisco 49ers were heartbreaking in their own way, they don’t compare to the black stain that is the playoff loss to the Packers in the 2023 season. That loss to McCarthy’s old team is arguably the worst postseason loss in franchise history. It was an embarrassing display by the Cowboys, the No. 2 seed, against a young Packers team that just snuck into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed. The Cowboys’ offense and defense both failed to show up that day, despite all of the circumstances lining up in Dallas’ favor.
The magnitude of that Packers loss was such that many would have understood if Jerry Jones had decided to fire McCarthy in the aftermath. Instead, the Cowboys owner and general manager elected to allow McCarthy to coach out the final year of his contract as one final gasp. It was a failure almost from the start, with the Cowboys getting blown out of their own stadium in Week 2 by the New Orleans Saints, who would fire their coach midseason.
For a long time, it was the Cowboys, Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders that were mentioned as teams with a long conference championship appearance drought. The Lions snapped out of that group last season. The Commanders are ascending and in the postseason this year. The Cowboys’ drought will likely extend into 2026. — Saad Yousuf, Cowboys staff writer
What’s next for the Cowboys?
It’s unknown if Dallas will conduct an expansive search or interview only a few candidates to find their 10th head coach in franchise history. After deciding to move on from Jason Garrett following the 2019 season, the Cowboys interviewed only two coaches, McCarthy and Marvin Lewis. Garrett took over after Wade Phillips was fired in 2010. When Phillips was hired in 2007, the Cowboys interviewed 10 candidates for the job.
The most popular name at this time is Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. But the interviews could include a wide range of candidates. There are former NFL head coaches like Brian Flores, Kliff Kingsbury, Ron Rivera, Pete Carroll and possibly even Jon Gruden. And then there are current coordinators with no head-coaching experience like Aaron Glenn, Liam Coen and Joe Brady.
None of these are close to being an obvious choice. After hiring McCarthy, Jones said one of their primary goals was to focus on a “proven team builder and winner” who had a “proven track record of winning, not only consistently but at the highest level.”
Because of that statement from 2020 and things Jones has said since, it seems highly unlikely that he would be interested in hiring someone directly from the college game, even though the two coaches he won Super Bowls with — Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer — were both hired without any NFL coaching experience. Jones, who turned 82 in October, is much more likely to hire not only someone with NFL experience, but NFL head-coaching experience.
“You’ve got a choice,” Jones said after hiring McCarthy. “You can get in that foxhole with somebody that hasn’t been shot at it. You can get in there with somebody that’s been shot at. Or you can get in there with somebody that’s been shot at and hit and is still going. Now, that’s the one I want to be in there with.” — Jon Machota, Cowboys staff writer
Required reading
(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
