On the heels of back-to-back wins, the support for Mike McCarthy has increased slightly. Despite this, it’s hard to envision him back on the sidelines with the Dallas Cowboys in 2025.
Not only did McCarthy coach this season on a lame-duck contract, but Jerry Jones made no real effort to build a championship roster. Instead, it appears he’s got his eyes on 2025 and beyond, which has led to a lot of speculation surrounding the next head coach.
One of the hottest names out there is Ben Johnson, the offensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions. Johnson is in his thrid season with the Lions and turned their offense into a powerhouse. They finished in the top five in yards in 2022 and 2023 and are currently second this season. They’re also first in scoring while boasting one of the more balanced offenses in the NFL.
It’s only natural that Dallas fans have been throwing his name around as the potential heir to McCarthy but a recent report from Albert Breer makes that seem impossible. While speaking on Thursday Night Football before the Detroit game against Green Bay, Breer listed out what Johnson is looking for in a head coaching job.
“Number one: he’ll be looking for organizational alignment, in particular between the GM and the head coach. And then he’ll be looking for a recognition from the organization of the things that have gone wrong and a willingness to fix them.” — Breer said via NFL on Prime Video
There’s not one part of that statement that will come true under Jones.
The owner of the Cowboys named himself GM when he purchased the team and while he tends to work well with his coaches early in the tenure, he can’t help but get in the way eventually. We saw that this offseason when he neglected to add talent to help McCarthy in a contract year and stuck him with Ezekiel Elliott, who has always been a favorite of Jones.
Of course, his desperation for a winning team might give Jones a slight nudge in that regard, there’s no way he’s going to be someone who will openly admit mistakes and fix them. There are a couple of prime examples this year alone.
When it became clear Elliott wasn’t the player Jones said he was, Jerry buried his head in the sand and claimed they were “saving him” for down the road. He even threatened the crew at 105.3 The Fan for questioning him about their ground game.
There was also the glare debacle when CeeDee Lamb couldn’t haul in a touchdown pass since Jones refuses to address the sun’s tendancy to burn the retinas of his pass-catchers. He claimed it was a home-field advantage, even though it seems his team is the one that always suffers from it, then reminded us how great of an investment he made in 1989 when he bought the Cowboys.
As long as Jones insists on being the face of the franchise, the Cowboys are going to have issues. And a coach with Johnson’s leverage will want nothing to do with that.
