Hot seat? McCarthy not fixated on his future
The Cowboys have left the oppressive heat of Texas behind to train in the cool, ocean breezes of Southern California.
But when you’re the head coach of the Cowboys, there are some things you can’t escape.
Mike McCarthy has his team coming off a division title and a 12-win season, a bar exceeded by only three teams in the 33 years Jerry Jones has owned the franchise. McCarthy will tell you the group that arrived in Oxnard on Monday afternoon is clearly further along than the one that reported one year ago.
Yet here he is, fielding questions about his job security seven weeks before the regular season gets underway.
“It’s irritating that the first question you ask me has nothing to do with how I do my job,” McCarthy said before leaving for training camp. “I show up every day for work to win a championship. How do we win today? That’s what I’m asking.
“My viewpoint is it’s not a story. It’s a media-driven narrative, or at least a narrative driven outside my realm.”
It’s a narrative he’ll likely be asked about again when the coach joins Jerry and Stephen Jones for Tuesday’s annual news conference to open training camp. It will reverberate after every loss or lackluster performance during the season or when someone asks former New Orleans coach Sean Payton if he intends to leave the broadcast booth to return to coaching.
Hint: He does.
What must McCarthy do this season to quiet the speculation? It’s not a question he asks himself.
“How does this effect winning? That’s what I ask of players, coaches and staff,” McCarthy said of his approach. “If it doesn’t have to do with winning, it’s a waste of each other’s time.
“I don’t put any credence into these stories, but my family has to listen to it. I’ve already spent too much energy on it answering these questions.”
Jerry Jones has said moving on from McCarthy, who’s in the third year of a five-year contract, was never a consideration. But the owner’s refusal to make that public declaration until 12 days after the team’s wild-card loss to San Francisco fanned the flames.
“That was an answer after an emotional playoff loss,” McCarthy said. “Maybe those words did not come out exactly as he wanted. I know that’s happened to me in those moments.
“The reality of it is that’s not an accurate presentation of who we are as a football team. If you want to talk about how everyone here is working hard to get it right and exemplify what we can become, great. If you want to chase these other narratives for whoever they benefit, I really have no interest.”
Payton looms over one shoulder. Defensive coordinator Dan Quinn over the other. That’s how some portray McCarthy’s reality.
Payton to the Cowboys is the urban legend that won’t die. It never will with the affinity Jones displays for the former Cowboys assistant.
And Quinn?
Jones said in January the reason he didn’t immediately voice his support for McCarthy is because he believed strategically it would help him retain Quinn, who interviewed for head-coaching jobs with other organizations. Jones felt the apparent public ambiguity would allow the club to buy some time behind the scenes to keep them together.
McCarthy was working just as hard as Jones to get Quinn to return.
“I have a great working relationship with Dan Quinn,” said McCarthy, who is part of a group along with Quinn that goes through a boxing workout during mornings at The Star. “I enjoy him personally and professionally. I’m very fortunate to have someone on my staff that knows exactly what I’m dealing with.
“The longer you are in this league you just want to be better. I know I’m better. I feel like he’s better. It’s the experiences we’ve had.”
McCarthy’s job is to make his coaches and players successful. His focus now is workload capacity and efficiency in this camp. He labels the work the team did during the offseason program as tremendous, although it did result in a $100,000 fine from the NFL and the loss of a practice during next year’s organized team activities because of a session that was too physical.
“I don’t want to get into that,” said McCarthy, who was fined $50,000 last year for a similar infraction. “I’ve always created a very safe environment for our players and this year was no different.”
McCarthy is excited to get this camp underway. In the coming days and weeks discussions about his job security will fade.
But it won’t go away. When you go as long as the Cowboys have without a trip to the NFC championship game, when the five coaches before you all fell short, that frustration builds within a fan base.
It builds within an owner. “Is there more of this talk today than there was 10 years ago?” McCarthy asked rhetorically about the league’s head coaches. “Absolutely.
“Is there more here than other places? Definitely. That’s accurate.
“But I’m here to win a championship. That’s what gets me up in the morning.”