John Wooden once said, “It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.” To me, that applies wholeheartedly to the Dallas Cowboys.
They are on a nice 4-game winning streak, and plenty of people deserve praise for their efforts.
The Rapper Drake once said that we don’t get any awards for this, especially for a 9-3 team with five games left in the season.
Nevertheless, here goes nothing.
It could be because of the streak they’ve been on, but most of the commentary on Head Coach Mike McCarthy has been positive overall. Granted, we know that can change with a single call.
Some might question his decision to kick the field goal while up by three instead of running more time off the clock.
But I also didn’t know what the analytics told him to do in that scenario.
Since I don’t know, I’ll only comment on what my eyes tell me.
Mike McCarthy has helped recreate home-field advantage in AT&T stadium
This has been building over the last two seasons that Mike has been the head coach.
Dallas legitimately looks like the more robust, more complete team at home. That has not always been the case.
The Cowboys record at home under McCarthy has been 13-1 since 2022.
As a comparison, let’s use the tenure of Jason Garrett. It has been a while since we’ve talked about ‘Coach Clap,’ but he has to make some appearances.
Since 2011, Garrett led his squads to a 41-31 record at home. His best two seasons were in 2016 and 2018, where both were 7-1 Tony Romo-led teams.
What made it worse for Jason is that Dallas squandered a 2016 opportunity against, you guessed it, a Mike McCarthy-led Packers team.
It’s worth celebrating that Dallas remains unbeaten in their home games.
McCarthy knows he’ll have to do even more in the regular season so that his team can use this hard-fought home field advantage to their advantage in the playoffs. There is a slim chance they host a home game this year.
However, he still has them playing much better at home.
The time of possession game has flipped now that Mike is the playcaller
Under Offensive Coordinator Kellen Moore, Dallas had a high-scoring offense. There was no doubt about that.
Despite the points, Dallas found themselves facing the same predicaments in the postseason.
I’ll be the first to admit that Kellen getting the lion’s share of the blame isn’t fair and may even be shortsighted.
McCarthy and Brian Schottenheimer have the offense humming.
More importantly, the balance across the board is apparent.
Last season, Dallas ranked 22nd in time of possession with an average of 29:27. However, this season, they have improved significantly and currently hold the third spot at 32:03.
When you look at it in practice, the Seattle Seahawks game had crumbs of proof sprinkled in it.
You don’t have to look further than the last two defensive drives.
The defense was well-rested and able to attack because they didn’t have to complement an offense with big plays and frequent four-and-outs.
The head ball coach stressed this in the offseason, and while it’s still early, we must tip our hats to the progress we’ve seen.
This offense is no longer motionless
We don’t have to spend a lot of time here.
For the casual fan, we should have been at this point years ago, but for some reason, we weren’t.
The Dallas Cowboys used formations and different skill positions to motion across the offense to determine what coverage the defense was in.
If John Owning is accurate, 72.2% exceeded my expectations, at least for this game for the Dallas Cowboys.
That’s only partially what Mike gets credit for. It’s what he does off the motion.
Yes, it helps Dak identify man-to-man or zone coverage and things of that sort.
For me, it was the end around that Lamb pulled off to burn more time off the clock late in the 4th quarter.
The only way that’s pulled off is if you have been motioning throughout the game. The defense didn’t see it coming and went for a significant gain, as described in the tweet below.
So, I completely get it. Dallas is feeling good right now.
Mike McCarthy is in his bag, but the season is far from over. We need more of this McCarthy, especially heading into the winter months.
However, that shouldn’t stop us from giving him his flowers for what he has done.
