It’s fair to wonder whether Mike McCarthy’s seat is heating up. Even if it is, Jerry Jones apparently won’t do anything until the season is over.
Sunday's disaster against the Lions was a nadir for a team that has had a bumpy run to begin the season. The Cowboys were drubbed by Detroit at home 47-9, with the Lions scoring at will and running one trick play after another as they undressed Dallas.
The Cowboys now sit at 3-3. While there obviously is plenty of time for things to get corrected, a .500 record at this point in the season certainly was not what Jones or anybody was envisioning for this team. In other words, the makings are there for McCarthy to get canned.
But firing a coach midseason is not a common practice for Jones -- save for when he replaced Wade Phillips with Jason Garrett in 2010 when the Cowboys were sitting at 1-7. Asked Tuesday in his weekly appearance on Shan & RJ, Jones wouldn’t even entertain the question.
“I won’t be making any others during the season,” Jones, who was testy throughout the interview, said.
“We were 1-7 at that time. 1-7,” Jones said. “I think as I recall, we had gotten beat the week before by about the same score – we were on the road, not at home – but about the exact score that we got beat Sunday. We got beat and so I made the change, and we had one win. Little bit of difference there, man.”
Indeed, there is a difference between where the Cowboys were in 2010 versus now. However, coaches have been fired for less, although Jones tried to make clear he has an aversion to midseason coaching changes altogether.
“They aren’t good. And they usually are ineffective and they just aren’t good,” Jones said. “They’ve got to be – at that particular time (in 2010), I did think it was the thing to do. I think it did produce a positive effect, but we’ll never know, will we?
“All Wade did was move over to Denver, he didn’t become the head coach, he became the defensive coordinator. And it was one of the few times in my 35 years in the NFL that I heard throughout the league that the one coach was responsible for them having the team (they did), and that was Wade Phillips running the defense for Denver when they won the Super Bowl.”