Here are 10 things to know about Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy.
1. His background
McCarthy may have spent his previous head coaching days in Green Bay, but his football fandom began in Pittsburgh as a fan of the Steelers. McCarthy, 59, grew up in the Greenfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, according to a 2011 New York Times story. His father, Joe, was a firefighter and police officer in town. He and Mike’s mother, Ellen, owned a bar and grill called “Chasers in the run,” which is still there.
“I like that Pittsburgh macho stuff,” former Packers general manager Ted Thompson told The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel when he hired McCarthy. “He’s a tough guy.”
A little bit of irony: McCarthy’s Super Bowl championship, which was played at AT&T Stadium during the 2010-11 season, was a win over the Steelers.
2. New Cowboys duties
The Cowboys may have a new offensive coordinator after Brian Schottenheimer replaced Kellen Moore in January, but it’ll be McCarthy calling the plays on that side of the ball. Remember that Super Bowl with Green Bay. McCarthy was calling plays then, too.
This was done to keep things consistent for quarterback Dak Prescott. That doesn’t mean it won’t require adjustment.
“When you switch play-callers, a big point of that is you’ve got to get into the season, before Game 1, know who you are and what you want to do and how you want to attack the defense,” Prescott told The Dallas Morning News.
3. His playing days
After graduating from Bishop Boyle in Pittsburgh, McCarthy headed west to Arizona to play football for the Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes. He then transferred to Baker University, a NAIA school in Baldwin City, Kansas. There, he was a two-time all-conference tight end and the captain of the 1986 team that finished as the national runner-up.
4. His coaching start
McCarthy got his coaching start as a graduate assistant and linebackers coach at Fort Hays State in Kansas, but his big break happened in 1989 when he became a volunteer graduate assistant at Pittsburgh. While coaching, he also worked as a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to make ends meet, according to The New York Times. He then became the wide receivers coach at Pittsburgh before he became an assistant for the Kansas City Chiefs. He then worked as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator in the NFL for 13 seasons until the Packers hired him as their head coach in 2006.
5. His postseason experience
McCarthy brought championship experience to a Cowboys team in a significant Super Bowl drought. But it hasn’t been perfect in Dallas for McCarthy, even after winning seasons. McCarthy, now with an 11-10 postseason record, has won just one playoff game in three seasons as the Cowboys’ head coach.
The win came against Tampa Bay in January. And it was a sweetener that it was Tom Brady’s final postseason appearance.
Granted, the Cowboys are coming off back-to-back 12-win seasons, which McCarthy never did in Green Bay. There’s potential, but the Cowboys have to execute when it matters most.
6. He’s also won against the Cowboys
McCarthy’s run in Green Bay featured 10 run-ins against the Cowboys. Those games went a lot better for his former employer than his current one. The Packers went 7-3 in those games and won both playoff matchups. One of those wins was the 2014 NFC Divisional Round which is famously known for the controversial ruling on a pivotal Dez Bryant reception that was later ruled an incompletion.
Here’s his career record against the NFC East since joining the Cowboys
| Wins | Losses | |
|---|---|---|
| Eagles | 4 | 2 |
| Giants | 5 | 1 |
| Commanders | 3 | 3 |
7. He’s had great quarterbacks
Brett Favre is in the Hall of Fame. Aaron Rodgers most likely will join him one day, too. Those are the two starting quarterbacks Mike McCarthy had while he was the head coach of the Packers. A successful quarterback is essential to a team’s success, and Favre and Rodgers undoubtedly were major components of McCarthy’s successful tenure with Green Bay.
8. He struggled without those great quarterbacks
Rodgers has had two seasons in his career where he missed significant time due to injuries. In 2013, he led the Packers to a 6-3 record before he broke his collarbone. The Packers went 2-4-1 without him and lost in the first round of the postseason. In 2017, he broke his collarbone again. The Packers were 4-3 in games with him and 3-6 without him. It makes sense a team would struggle without its starting quarterback, and with backups the likes of Seneca Wallace, Scott Tolzien and Brett Hundley, the Packers and McCarthy did.
His tenure in Dallas has been a bit different.
Prescott missed five games in the 2022-23 season with a hand injury, so McCarthy need to sustain the damage with backup QB Cooper Rush. The Cowboys did more than that by going 4-1, only losing to a Jalen Hurts-led Eagles team.
It went well enough to bring Rush back.
9. His reportedly rocky relationship with Rodgers
McCarthy and Rodgers had a lot of success together in Green Bay. In April 2019, about five months after McCarthy was fired by Green Bay, a story from Bleacher Report’s Ty Dunne suggested that the tandem could’ve won more if not for a rocky relationship.
“The worst-kept secret at 1265 Lombardi Avenue was that Rodgers seemed to loathe his coach from the moment McCarthy was hired,” Dunne wrote.
McCarthy was the offensive coordinator in San Francisco when the 49ers selected Alex Smith with the No. 1 pick instead of Rodgers, who fell all the way to 24th.
The feature alleges multiple other things about the two’s time together in Green Bay, but it centers on the point that more titles could’ve been won in Titletown.
“This was a smear attack by a writer looking to advance his career talking with mostly irrelevant, bitter players who all have an agenda, whether they’re advancing their own careers or just trying to stir old stuff up,” Rodgers told ESPN Wisconsin radio, via Business Insider, in response to the Bleacher Report article.
10. His year off and “The McCarthy Project”
When head coaches are fired, some choose to immediately find a new job, whether it’s as a head coach or an assistant. McCarthy chose to take the 2019 season off and prepare to rejoin the coaching ranks in 2020. He also used the time to reflect and analyze his coaching career, according to ESPN.
He started a group called “The McCarthy Project” which does “video research, data and analytics” with a group of his former colleagues. Former Saints head coach Jim Haslett was one person who worked with McCarthy. ESPN also reported that McCarthy used the project to create a “blueprint” for a coaching staff and ideas for a ”heavily staffed team of analytics and football technology departments.”
The Cowboys have emerged as a contender since McCarthy joined three seasons ago. Capitalizing is the next step.
Find more Cowboys coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.