With win over Bengals, Mike McCarthy moves closer to proving himself in Dallas

Contemplate this half pat on the again, half apology and half heavy dose of realism for Mike McCarthy, who received his first win of the season out of the way in which in shocking vogue towards final 12 months’s convention champions.

After Dak Prescott went down, most of us have been no less than making ready a model of his employment obituary in Dallas. We believed, in the end, that he had not logged sufficient successes, that his group wouldn’t win many video games with out Prescott, and that the Cowboys wouldn’t probability the near-future of their roster on a coach who had some unhealthy luck however didn’t overperform. In a cosmic sense, McCarthy has been screwed by a damaged ankle then a damaged thumb sustained by his star quarterback over a three-year span, however how prepared would proprietor Jerry Jones be to contemplate this when there might be a extra quick repair out there at his disposal?

These are all cheap beliefs, however one of the best half about soccer is what McCarthy and his workers did on Sunday. They gave Joe Burrow’s new offensive line the soccer equal of a center finger, lining up in all types of strange fronts that hid Micah Parsons and tortured a bunch of sufficiently gifted however nonetheless unfamiliar free brokers to determine it out. They let Cooper Rush throw the ball on fourth-and-short early within the recreation. They flipped the ball to Tony Pollard. They remoted their greatest offensive gamers. They received the sort of signature, open-field deal with in an enormous second that’s so mandatory in a good win but additionally indicative of a group’s willingness to nonetheless give a you-know-what. This was not the sort of painfully conservative offense we sometimes see trotted out for a backup quarterback, the insult-to-football early-down handoffs and the cruel string of punts.

The Cowboys’ plan was considerably guerilla, however largely it was the sort of efficiency that, a couple of years in the past when Jones employed McCarthy within the first place, we’d have anticipated from a steady offensive thoughts that bought himself as a person who understood the fashionable recreation. The laborious half, in fact, is that McCarthy should proceed this Herculean stretch for a handful of weeks. As a result of the identical beliefs we had going into the Bengals recreation are nonetheless cheap ones.

McCarthy, although, could also be higher than we’ve given him credit score for. That’s a line of thought we’re prepared to entertain after watching them deal with a superior roster in a must-win scenario. That’s the great thing about this upcoming slate of video games, the place he might both cement himself because the coach of the Dallas Cowboys by doing simply concerning the hardest factor a head coach has to do within the NFL (win persistently with a backup quarterback), or he might fall sufferer to the second. Extra merely put: He has an opportunity to be the sort of coach Jones dreamed he might be, or the sort of coach Jones has already gotten rid of earlier than.

McCarthy won’t be judged the way in which one would decide a typical coach as a result of he didn’t come into Dallas billed as a typical coach. He changed Jason Garrett who, for all of his shortcomings, gained the division each different 12 months from 2014 on; an individual who was adored by possession and, concerning quarterbacks, fostered the expansion of each an undrafted free agent (Tony Romo) and a fourth-round decide (Prescott). McCarthy positioned himself as the reply. Because the Tremendous Bowl successful head coach who took a 12 months off to self-evaluate and broaden his offensive cannon.

Should you would have fast-forwarded from his opening press convention in Dallas to Sunday’s recreation towards the Bengals, with no information of the gaps of time between, this all would have gelled.

What we noticed on Sunday, particularly from an offensive perspective, felt new and unfamiliar. We nonetheless aren’t certain if this can be a new(ish) coach, new(ish) offense and new(ish) capacity to maximise the expertise left on the roster. Or if this was simply luck. Or if this was only a struggling Bengals group. Or if this was only a unusual, fluky second in time that won’t shade our long-term opinion by some means.

However we do know that if McCarthy retains it up, he’ll have eradicated the heavy coating of doubt that has accompanied his tenure in Dallas. We do know that he’s one step nearer to doing so than many people had given him credit score for.

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