FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys (7-9) could be one of the biggest NFL head coaching vacancies of the 2025 coaching carousel. Or they could not.
The last two weeks of Cowboys football (an upset victory over the NFC South-leading Tampa Bay Buccaneers and a 41-7 faceplant against the Philadelphia Eagles) plus Dallas owner Jerry Jones’ tendency to operate with a “deadlines make deals” mentality, create a cloud of uncertainty that hangs over head coach Mike McCarthy and his entire coaching staff. They have one game remaining, a Week 18 regular season home finale against the playoff-bound Washington Commanders (11-5), before the final year of the entire staff’s contracts expire.
McCarthy himself has kept his head in the sand about his future, trying to do what he can to get his players to lock in for more week of action before entering a long offseason. It’s the Cowboys’ first year without reaching the postseason since 2020 — McCarthy’s first season in which quarterback Dak Prescott also suffered a season-ending injury — following three consecutive playoff berths thanks to 12-5 records from 2021 to 2023.
“Pretty much. There have been variations of it. I think clearly, understanding where we are today, coming off of a hard loss, we need to finish the race,” McCarthy said when asked about his message to the team about finishing what they started. “That’s our responsibility. That’s our commitment. It will definitely be in that realm.”
An intriguing wrinkle about McCarthy’s situation is he isn’t entirely beholden to Jones’ whims since he is set to become a coaching free agent, and he’s got a resume that could garner interest around the league. McCarthy’s 174 regular season wins are the 13th-most in NFL coaching history. He’s a Super Bowl champion head coach, and a season ago, his Cowboys had the No. 1 scoring offense with Prescott leading the NFL in passing touchdowns (36) and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb leading the league in receptions (135).
“I think the biggest thing … I need to make sure I’m doing exactly what I’m asking everyone else to do. We need to finish the race,” McCarthy said when asked if he’d like to remain in Dallas. “It’s been a challenging year, based on our contract situation for coaches. It’s stating the obvious, but we’ll have time to talk about that next week.”
McCarthy was willing to go in-depth on his gratitude for players like Prescott, who are going to bat for him to stay in a one-on-one interview with CBS Sports on Dec. 3 and again postgame Sunday in Philadelphia.
“Thank you,” McCarthy said about what he would say to players wanting him to return in 2025. “Yeah, absolutely. I think just a reflection of what we have here. It’s a reflection of, everybody talks about culture and I’m not up here to give a bunch of buzzwords, but we do things the right way, I can attest to that. I’ve done this long enough to have a strong opinion to how to run a program, what’s best for the players, the players are coached. They’re coached with detail. There’s demand there. Accountability. So the basics are in place, but we’re like any other program, we need to get better. There’s a number of areas we need to improve on, but that’s what the offseason is for. … We have things within our realm that you need to win, and we had a number of challenges this year and we didn’t overcome them all. That’s why I’m standing here talking about not being in the playoffs.”
Given the rash of injuries Dallas has suffered this season, McCarthy feels, in a way, that the franchse will be better for it next season.
“I do, I think we’ve got a great group of men to work with,” McCarthy said. “Stud vets. We brought vets in from other places more late than we have in the past, took a little longer to get everybody tied together, but I do think we have a young group of players that have played a lot of football. My personal experience with that is that will pay dividends moving forward. I think the future is bright, and we have a lot of things in place here. We need to take a step back after next week and obviously a lot of decisions got to be made, a lot of business decisions got to be made because of our contract situation, and that’s what we’ll do.”
Defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer’s outlook
Zimmer, who has 29 seasons of NFL coaching experience including eight as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings from 2014-2021, has experienced coaching through the final year of his deal without any long-term stability. This time around, he maintains he doesn’t have strong feelings one way or the other.
“People in the real world do this all the time. They don’t have long-term contracts. I honestly don’t think it’s a big deal. … We’re doing a job that we love to do, but it is what it is. Worrying about it is not going to help anything.”
At the age of 68, Zimmer was out of the NFL for two seasons (2022-2023) after being let go by the Vikings, but he’s relished his NFL return this season. He didn’t want to specifically address his desire to continue coaching into 2025, but he did leave some hints that he would be open to continue as the Cowboys’ defensive play caller.
“I think No. 1 someone has to want you, so it’s always a two-way street,” Zimmer said. “We’ll just worry about all that stuff after the season. … I know it’s late in the season, but it’s too early to be talking about the future and all those other things. So we’ll just keep trying to do the best job that we can, and then everybody will sit down and have a conversation. Jerry will decide what he decides, and the rest of us will decide what we have to do decide.”
The one regret that sticks out to Zimmer is not wanting to rock the boat and change too much of Dallas’ defensive scheme initially after the Cowboys were a top-five unit under his predecessor Dan Quinn, who is now the Commanders’ head coach. Dallas’ defense started to find its stride once three-time All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons returned from his high ankle sprain in Week 10, and his players grew accustomed to how Zimmer wanted them to play.
“I was just doing things (schematically) that I was uncomfortable with,” Zimmer said. … “So here was the situation OK? They were good last year right? So I come in, so I don’t really want to rock the boat. I probably wasn’t as tough as I typically am. I probably wasn’t as hard-headed about things about how I wanted to do things, so I wasn’t. That’s what I regret the most.”
Overall, he’s soaked up being back around the game, and he noted he got back into NFL coaching because that’s what his son Adam, who died at the age of 38 in 2022, would have wanted. Zimmer himself became emotional with his eyes watering up and voice trembling when talking about his son.
“It’s been good. I can remember first game when we played Cleveland, went out there to the stadium, and I said, ‘Oh man, this is pretty cool again,'” Zimmer said. … “I needed it for my son … Adam was a terrific kid, is a terrific kid. Really smart, loved football. You know he would give his left arm to be here to do this. So I know that he’s upstairs, looking down cheering every Sunday.”
