Kellen Moore extended, groomed as successor to Mike McCarthy
Updated Wednesday, January 6, 2021
LLANO, Texas – For the Dallas Cowboys, the football season ended the same way it began, with confusion, lack of effort, lack of poise, lack of coaching. They lost 23-19 to the New York Giants to conclude a miserable 6-10 season, with no postseason. And now I see why Aaron Rodgers was so frustrated with Mike McCarthy.
It wasn’t just massages in his office, causing the portly McCarthy to be late for meetings. It wasn’t that he didn’t give Rodgers enough compliments or freedom to audible. There were so many other things that had to do with coaching. The Super Bowl championship that McCarthy won in Green Bay must have been due primarily to the MVP quarterback, and probably in spite of the head coach.
I never subscribed to the notion that the Cowboys would be the best team in football if only they had Bill Belichick coaching, Dak Prescott healthy and Zeke Elliott slender like he used to be. There are too many things wrong with this team, though not too many to fix in one good off-season if you had the right people calling the shots. Which of course you don’t.
In a season full of mistakes, McCarthy’s biggest one was hiring as defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, who had a full resume of failures. But he was a friend of McCarthy, who apparently knows less about defense than offense.
Jerry Jones was not showing confidence in McCarthy when he gave offensive coordinator Kellen Moore a lucrative 3-year extension to keep him from taking the head-coaching job at his alma mater, Boise State.
Moore, 31, looks like the Cowboys’ head coach-in-waiting. He will get promoted once it becomes more obvious that McCarthy is not up to the task.
Nolan will go first paying the price for shifting the Cowboys from the 4-3 front that they’ve used, literally, forever, to a 3-4 for which they had not drafted.
The change neutralized the core defenders – DeMarcus Lawrence, Leighton Vander Esch, Jaylon Smith. Gaps sprang up everywhere; Dallas ranked last in the league in run defense, yielding 160.1 yards per game.
The 3-4 was designed by the late Bum Phillips because he did not have a cherished pass-rushing defensive end. He observed that it was much easier to find linebackers to provide pass pressure. But the Cowboys already had a Pro Bowl defensive end in Lawrence. And they had a promising young DE in Randy Gregory. Pass rush was the least of their problems. The last thing they needed was realignment.
The reports out of camp were that Nolan did not know how to teach his defense, nor did his assistants. The players did pick up some clues near the end of the season. The team had 10 takeaways during a three-game winning streak that ended Sunday.
But in their must-win regular season finale (“microcosm of our season,” McCarthy accurately called it), the Cowboys were back to their wandering ways, unable to curtail Wayne Gallman charging up the middle, unable to cover Dante Pettis on the perimeter.
And there was McCarthy, unable to throw a challenge flag when replays indicated Pettis did not secure the ball on the 10-yard gain that set up a key fourth-quarter field goal by Graham Gano.
“Just felt it was too close,” McCarthy said. “And the three timeouts was obviously of high value there. We just didn’t think there was enough information to overturn it.”
The non-catch by Pettis, on third-down, set up a 50-yard field goal to push the Giants’ lead to 23-19 with 6:28 to play. So now quarterback Andy Dalton would have to produce a touchdown instead of a mere field goal to win. Instead, he threw an end-zone interception.
Perhaps more disturbing was the lack of focus by the Cowboys throughout this game. The Giants were the more physical team and also the more alert. There was video early in the game of Giants center Nick Gates confronting linebacker Jaylon Smith, who backed off.
Then came a gaffe by Dallas cornerback Jourdan Lewis, who incurred a potentially costly 15-yard penalty for head-butting the helmet of tight end Kaden Smith. Lewis was not at all remorseful, but was shown on TV laughing about his blunder.
Oh, well, it’s now the off-season with lots of decisions coming. Look for Lewis on another team, along with Chibobe Awuzie, Connor Williams and other disappointments.
McCarthy wants to keep Nolan, blaming coronavirus for preventing players from sufficiently practicing the new scheme. But Jones isn’t buying. “People got the job done with Covid,” he said.
Once Nolan is disposed of, the next main issue is securing a quarterback. Jones insists he wants to keep Prescott, whose playing future is clouded by a compound fracture and dislocation of his right ankle.
I’ve suggested the team would be better off letting Prescott play for $40 million somewhere else. The Cowboys could re-sign Dalton for less than half that amount and have cash available to upgrade the offensive line and the defense. But the reinvestment in Moore is a sign that Jones is committed to Prescott. Dalton, who’s now a free agent again, won’t want another backup role at age 33.
Obviously the ‘Boys need help, especially on defense. But the talent here is better than that on most teams — much better, for example, than what’s on the Houston Texans’ roster. Gregory, at 28 a late bloomer struggling with marijuana dependency, seems finally to have conquered his demons. He now looks like he will be a fine 4-3 end, opposite Lawrence. At tackle is Neville Gallimore, a rookie who proved tough against the run and also provided a strong inside rush.
The secondary was abused by the Giants and everybody else, but rookie Trevon Diggs showed Pro Bowl promise. And Donovan Wilson, 25, played well at safety, with 3 ½ sacks and 2 interceptions, while ranking third on the team in tackles.
Jerry’s son Stephen has drafted generally well, despite the meddling of his dad. But player development and coaching in this organization have lagged for two decades. Jerry Jones has invested too much in McCarthy to dump him after one season. Let’s be optimistic and point out that the coach is only 57. Hopefully we haven’t seen the best of him.
