3 fireable offenses by Mike McCarthy in Cowboys Thanksgiving loss
By John Buhler
Mike McCarthy’s Dallas Cowboys have cratered to an abysmal 3-8 record in 2020.
The Dallas Cowboys are an absolutely pitiful team under head coach Mike McCarthy.
After years of .500 ball under former head coach Jason Garrett, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones opted to go with a former Super Bowl champion head coach in McCarthy. Well, if the buyer’s remorse has not set in by now for Jones, it soon will. Dallas has plummeted to an utterly atrocious 3-8 record. The Cowboys are not making the playoffs and McCarthy could be one-and-done in Big D.
Here are three fireable offenses committed by Mike McCarthy on Thanksgiving
3. Fourth-and-1 pass in the first half
Back when the game was still a game, McCarthy went ultra finesse on a fourth-and-1 conversion attempt. The game was tied at 10 points apiece in the middle of the second quarter. With the ball on the Dallas 34-yard-line, the Cowboys went for it and not in the manner any winning team should. They opted to throw it, as opposed to running it ,and got totally burned for doing so.
Not only did quarterback Andy Dalton‘s short pass not get completed to wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, but tight end Dalton Schultz got flagged for an unnecessary roughness penalty. So instead of the Washington Football Team taking over on the Dallas 34-yard-line, they got it in the red zone on the Cowboys’ 19-yard-line. Five plays later, they scored the game-winning touchdown.
The reason this was a fireable offense is because he put way too much faith in his bad football team and put it in a situation that was failed from the start. If the Cowboys were closer to the 50-yard-line by say 10 yards, throwing it with Dalton would not have been as egregious. Had McCarthy decided to pound the rock from the 34-yard-line, it would have been a better option.
So not only did a poor play call give Washington such a short field, but a costly penalty by Schultz essentially flipped the game forever in Washington’s favor. By inherent recklessness, he gifted Washington three points and was willing to give them a high five if they gained an extra four by his boneheaded decision. If the Cowboys punted, they may not have bottomed out so catastrophically.