Cowboys’ McCarthy is fighting history
DALLAS — Back in 1968, when the talent level in Dallas press boxes might have exceeded that on the fields below, a Dallas Times Herald sportswriter named Steve Perkins kept a diary of the Cowboys’ season with the intent of turning it into a literary masterpiece, if not a quick buck. Unfortunately, Perkins’ subjects, picked to win it all, finished short of projections, their unseemly exit ranked the most embarrassing in the organization’s history. Until last week, that is.
Anyway, Perkins’ book came out with the title, “Next Year’s Champions,” a jab that stuck as a cursed nickname for Dallas’ football team.
Funny, here it is, a half-century later, and it still sticks.
The thought might not have occurred to me at all if Mike McCarthy hadn’t started it this week when asked why fans should believe in the Cowboys’ chances next season. Fans were told this was the year. Turned out this one was no different from the 27 that preceded it.
And the Cowboys are just gonna run it back next season with the same crew?
Why should fans buy that? “Because I know how to win,” McCarthy said.
Of the 35 coaches who have won Super Bowls, no one has done it with more than one organization. Four coaches — Don Shula, Dick Vermeil, Mike Holmgren and Andy Reid — have made the Super Bowl with different teams. Dan Reeves did it three times with Denver and once with Atlanta. Never won a Lombardi. The evidence suggests it’s hard enough to win it all with one organization, much less two.
But, if you’re a Hall of Fame coach in one place, how come you can’t be a Hall of Famer anywhere?
Could it be the same reason we used to ask if it was Tom Brady or Bill Belichick?
For the purposes of this column, let’s narrow the field to the 14 coaches who won more than one Super Bowl. This eliminates any flukes. The odd Brian Billick. Of the 14 multiple winners, only two did it with more than one quarterback. George Seifert won with Joe Montana and Steve Young in San Francisco. Joe Gibbs topped that in Washington by winning three titles with four different quarterbacks: Joe Theismann, Jay Schroeder/ Doug Williams, and Mark Rypien. Think about that accomplishment. None of those quarterbacks is in anyone’s top 50.
Meanwhile, Belichick won all of his Lombardis with Brady, the consensus No. 1. Bill Walsh won three with Montana, an old benchmark. Andy Reid has two with Patrick Mahomes, the best of this generation. Jimmy Johnson got his courtesy of Troy Aikman, Tom Landry had Roger Staubach, Mike Shanahan had John Elway, Vince Lombardi had Bart Starr and Chuck Noll had Terry Bradshaw. Hall of Famers, all.
The other two-time winners — Shula, Tom Flores, Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin — didn’t necessarily have great quarterbacks. Bob Griese is a HOFer, but not Jim Plunkett, Phil Simms (with a little help from Jeff Hostetler) or Eli Manning, though Arch’s uncle is borderline.
Just the same, Eli’s case isn’t nearly as good as the quarterback who provided McCarthy his only Lombardi to date.
According to Pro Football Reference’s Hall of Fame Monitor, Aaron Rodgers’ metrics (192.43) rank behind only Brady (263.03) and Peyton Manning (257.8), who’s already in. The guy in fourth, one slot ahead of Johnny Unitas? Brett Favre, another HOFer.
Here’s the point, in case you got lost back there somewhere: In Mike McCarthy’s 13 years in Green Bay, he coached two of the four best quarterbacks in NFL history, according to Pro Football Reference. And what does McCarthy have to show for such a competitive advantage at the game’s most important position?
One Super Bowl title and three more trips to the NFC title game.
No question, he’s won a lot of games. Eighteenth on the all-time list. Tied for 10th in playoff wins with the likes of Parcells, Marv Levy, Pete Carroll, Dan Reeves and John Harbaugh. Then again, the 12 times he’s made the playoffs, his teams have won more than one postseason game just twice. Meaning that, more often than not, his teams do exactly what they did this season.
They win a lot, but not for long enough.
Even the greatest coaches need good-to-great quarterbacks to win multiple Super Bowls, and McCarthy doesn’t have Rodgers or Favre to lean on anymore. Doesn’t mean he won’t become the first to win a Lombardi in two different places, but nearly 60 years of evidence says that’s the way to bet. If you’re looking for some good historical news, just three years after Steve Perkins crowned the Cowboys “Next Year’s Champions,” they shed the title. The latest installment is officially on the clock.