Winning 12 games and a division title are usually good things for a head coach’s job security, but this offseason played out a bit differently for Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones didn’t move to solidify McCarthy’s status for some time after a home playoff loss to the 49ers. That delay gave time for speculation about hiring Sean Payton or promoting defensive coordinator Dan Quinn to take place in Dallas and elsewhere in the NFL.
Jones has since said that Payton shouldn’t be a “conversation piece” for McCarthy’s job, but Quinn’s new deal makes him a prime candidate to move up if the Cowboys want to make a change at some point. Talk of such a move is sure to pop up if the Cowboys struggle early in the season, but McCarthy has no interest in taking part in it.
“It’s irritating that the first question you ask me has nothing to do with how I do my job,” McCarthy told David Moore of the Dallas Morning News. “I show up every day for work to win a championship. How do we win today? That’s what I’m asking. My viewpoint is it’s not a story. It’s a media-driven narrative, or at least a narrative driven outside my realm.”
McCarthy said that any conversation that “doesn’t have to do with winning” is a waste of his time and he’ll need to do at least as much winning as he did last season to ensure that others aren’t expending a lot of energy debating his future in Dallas.