Mike McCarthy has seemingly been on the hot seat every offseason since the Dallas Cowboys hired him to be their franchise’s ninth-ever head coach ahead of the 2020 NFL offseason.
Once again, that appears to be the case as the NFL’s ‘Black Monday’ arrives.
McCarthy is in the midst of a disappointing fifth season with the Cowboys. Dallas struggled to win consistently early in the season, and many wrote them off after Dak Prescott suffered a season-ending hamstring injury in Week 9 against the Atlanta Falcons.
However, the Cowboys played well over the final seven weeks of the NFL season. That, along with Dallas owner Jerry Jones’ steadfast praise of the veteran coach, gave McCarthy some momentum going into the offseason.
Another complicating factor in Dallas’ decision is that McCarthy is in the final year of his contract. Therefore, Jones and Co. will need to work quickly to extend him if they want the 61-year-old to continue coaching in Dallas.
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Here’s what to know about McCarthy’s status as the 2024 NFL season winds down.
Will Cowboys fire Mike McCarthy?
McCarthy’s status with the Cowboys appears to be murky, but not necessarily due to a lack of confidence from Dallas’ ownership.
Jones has often endorsed McCarthy throughout the 2024 NFL season. The most recent example came during his weekly interview on 105.7 The Fan ahead of Week 18.
‘Well, I feel good about Mike McCarthy,’ Jones said, per Cowboys.com. ‘The main thing is, I like the job that he’s done, it’s unfortunate we’ve had the year that we’ve had, but I feel good about Mike.’
That doesn’t sound like an owner eager to move on from McCarthy. That said, the bigger question appears to be less about whether the Jones’ want McCarthy to return and more about whether the veteran coach would prefer to work elsewhere in 2025.
Numerous reports, including CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones, have indicated that McCarthy could be among the top coaching candidates on the market in 2025 if he doesn’t stay in Dallas. This could uniquely position McCarthy to decline an offer from the Cowboys if he believes he could land a spot with a team like the Chicago Bears or New Orleans Saints, where he was an offensive coordinator from 2000 to 2004.
That’s part of the reason The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reports that the Cowboys ‘are already doing their homework on potential head coaches.’ They don’t want to be left in the lurch if McCarthy leaves for greener pastures in 2025.
Mike McCarthy contract details
McCarthy signed a five-year contract with the Cowboys when he agreed to be the team’s head coach in 2020. That contract will expire shortly after the 2024 NFL season on Jan. 14, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero.
That will give the Cowboys a nine-day negotiating window to agree to a new deal with McCarthy.
Will the two parties agree to an extension in that window? Rapoport and Pelissero report that ‘there have been no substantive talks yet about an extension for McCarthy in Dallas,’ which could complicate the process.
As CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones reports, the other concern is whether McCarthy would settle for a four-year deal if offered an extension. A source told Jones that it wasn’t clear whether the veteran coach would be willing to accept that deal.
Either way, the Cowboys will have a lot of work to do in short order if they want to keep McCarthy. If they can’t agree to a deal right away, it could allow the Super Bowl 45 winner to see what he’s worth on the open market – and potentially leave on his own accord.
