Late Sunday night in the Dallas Cowboys locker room, as players reveled in a 26-24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, head coach Mike McCarthy was making his way through a jovial scene when he spotted Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones near an entrance. Earlier in the day, the two had shared a conversation steeped in disappointment when they’d learned the Cowboys had been eliminated from the playoffs by a Washington Commanders win. But now, as McCarthy approached Jerry, the tenor of the day had changed.

Jerry smiled. And when McCarthy held out his hand for a shake, the owner instead opened his arms and drew his head coach into a hug. He then took a few moments speaking to McCarthy, one hand on the coach’s shoulder and another gently tapping him in the chest with a fist. As the dialogue subsided, Jones patted McCarthy on the shoulder a few times and pumped his fist. All of this, perhaps not by coincidence, unfolded in front of a “Sunday Night Football” camera that was televising the emotional exchange to whatever portion of the Cowboys’ audience that was still watching.

If you were going to gauge what’s going on with the Cowboys’ head coach and the franchise’s owner right now, this was a worthwhile snippet of video for two reasons: First, it’s clearly something that Jerry — still keenly aware of optics and the power of theater — wanted people to see. Whether it was a public display of pride or affection that McCarthy had earned or Jones just wanted to staple an image to his words that night, he knew where the moment would go. In a word, everywhere. And the second reason the moment matters? Jerry knows it’s coming in the midst of a time when the primary conversation about McCarthy is one of his job status, a situation Jerry created when he chose to make his head coach go into the final year of his contract with no discernible public mandate on how an extension could be achieved.

Let’s be honest about this joyous but complicated embrace as it moves forward: both of these men created it. Jerry by letting McCarthy play out this string of games with no clarity on what could be next for the Cowboys’ coaching staff. And McCarthy by arguably saving his best coaching for the portion of the season when there was nothing more to clinch other than the dignity of not quitting.

Make no mistake, that’s what we saw unfold last night. McCarthy showcased a locker room that is still galvanized despite having lost a postseason aim. They gutted it out with a massive spate of injuries on the offensive line and backup quarterback in Cooper Rush, not to mention wideout CeeDee Lamb, who played through a painful shoulder issue Sunday. Join that with a shorthanded defense that battered a good Buccaneers offense and literally ripped a win away in the final moments of Sunday night, when cornerback DaRon Bland pulled a fumble from the belly of Tampa running back Rashaad White. It was a moment that encapsulated a number of big-play stands on both sides of the ball, definitively halting a game-winning drive that seemed very achievable for quarterback Baker Mayfield.

The resounding feeling? The Cowboys’ playoff hopes are dead, but the attitude toward the remaining schedule is anything but buried. Instead, a narrative about culture is unfurling — about whether there is actually some kind of underlying strength Dallas can display in the final weeks of the season that say something about this team and coach. Maybe it’s enough to fulfill the hopes of the franchise cornerstones, including Lamb, quarterback Dak Prescott and edge rusher Micah Parsons, who have all (in some fashion) endorsed a McCarthy return in 2025. Surely, Jerry has heard that message, leaving him to look for reasons to keep McCarthy that goes beyond the three straight 12-win seasons that preceded 2024.

Afterward, Jerry was effusive in his praise of the effort in the win over the Buccaneers — making clear that it had stoked something emotional inside him.

“Those guys came out and played as though they were fighting in the championship game to go to the Super Bowl,” Jones said afterward. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of them and the coaching staff. It really shows me something.”

For his part, McCarthy tried to put a fine point on what that something was.

“I just think that [effort] shows you who they are,” McCarthy said. “I think everybody says the coach is always talking highly of the locker room — well, this is what I’m talking about. When I talk about, ‘It’s a great locker room,’ this is the definition of it. This is what a great locker room looks like. And it’s a mixture of men from all over the country, all over the world and different personalities. Obviously in circumstances [out of the playoffs] that we’ve discussed at length already. But when it came time to play, they played their asses off and I can’t tell you how proud I am.”

Of course, this peak of sorts — winning four of the last five games, getting to 7-8 with a chance at finishing the season at 9-8 — comes with measuring that goes beyond just a great locker room. There are fair questions to be asked about where this locker room culture was during a brutal five-game losing streak from mid-October to mid-November. It was an expanse that saw Dallas get obliterated in three of those games, against the Detroit Lions (a 47-9 loss), Philadelphia Eagles (34-6) and Houston Texans (34-10). And it wasn’t that long ago that Jerry was openly questioning some parts of the Dallas scheme, while also spiraling into sometimes odd postgame diatribes that lacked a cohesive connection to the here and now.

Those were the days of Bill Belichick possibly being the next Cowboys coach, and they weren’t that long ago. But times can also change quickly with Jerry. He rides Everest-ian highs after wins and Death Valley lows after losses. All of which typically result in McCarthy’s own roller coaster when it comes to his future employment.

Right now, the Cowboys are winning again — even if it’s too little and too late when it comes to the postseason. But as the victories have begun to stack onto the ledger and the support of vital players has ebbed into the public (and Jerry’s) consciousness, the disappointment has also started to soften where it matters. You hear it in Jerry’s words. You see it in the arms and embrace between an owner and head coach that seemed to be an intentional message to the fan base.

Things are changing. A 9-8 finish and the positive feedback of his players has Mike McCarthy pointed toward the one thing Jerry has avoided offering him thus far.

A contract extension.

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