Dallas Cowboys’ home games in 2024 tend to produce the same kinds of reactions as Vice President Kamala Harris’ interviews.
You have seen the train wreck before, so it looks familiar, and yet somehow it still manages to astonish you.
In the waning moments of the Detroit Lions’ 47-9 thrashing of the Cowboys in Dallas on Sunday afternoon, Fox Sports cameras caught Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy reacting as if he had just heard the vice president speak.
“Wow,” McCarthy said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
Let’s check in on the #Cowboys and Mike McCarthy.#DETvsDAL pic.twitter.com/g0MG9Ip9zi
— Mike McDaniel (@MikMcDaniel) October 13, 2024
Oddly enough, the play that prompted the coach’s reaction had little impact on the game’s outcome. With 8:07 remaining in the fourth quarter, backup quarterback Cooper Rush threw a pass that Lions defensive back Kerby Joseph intercepted in the end zone. By then, Detroit already led by the ultimate final score of 47-9.
Thus, McCarthy’s reaction amounted to a cumulative “Wow.” And who could blame him? Just as we have seen Harris stumble through interviews, the coach has seen his team obliterated in home games.
Three weeks ago, in their most recent home game prior to Sunday, the Cowboys fell behind the Baltimore Ravens, 28-6, before rallying for 19 fourth quarter points that made the 28-25 final score look much closer than the game itself.
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That Baltimore debacle occurred one week after a 44-19 drubbing at the hands of the New Orleans Saints. New Orleans, which has not won a game since, raced to a 35-16 halftime lead.
Worst of all, perhaps, on Jan. 15 the Cowboys hosted the Green Bay Packers in a wildcard playoff game. Odds makers had Dallas, the conference’s #2 seed, as a seven-point favorite over the upstart #7 seed Packers. Incredibly, however, Green Bay built a 27-0 lead en route to a dominant 48-32 win.
In other words, the Cowboys have surrendered a jaw-dropping 167 total points in their last four home games.
As one might expect, therefore, X users wondered about McCarthy’s future.
“HOW DOES MIKE MCCARTHY STILL HAVE A JOB?” veteran sports writer and longtime Cowboys fan Skip Bayless posted on Sunday. A 77-second clip of the anguished sports writer venting his frustrations accompanied the post.
HOW DOES MIKE MCCARTHY STILL HAVE A JOB? pic.twitter.com/b256pPnRFe
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) October 13, 2024
Other X users took a more humorous approach by suggesting, for instance, that McCarthy might soon spend his evenings buttering popcorn at a movie theater.
Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy at work by this time tomorrow
— Hater Report (@HaterReport_) October 13, 2024
Remember, though, the old adage that a fish always stinks from the head.
McCarthy won a Super Bowl with the Packers as recently as the 2010-11 season.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys have not reached the NFC Championship Game since the 1995-96 season. Only the Washington Redskins/Commanders have a longer current stretch of futility on that front than does Dallas.
The common denominator in those three decades of failure is Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
After the game on Sunday, a local reporter asked if Jones planned to fire McCarthy.
“I haven’t even considered that. I’m not considering that,” the owner said in a clip posted to X.
Here’s my exchange with Jerry Jones asking what it would take for him to consider a coaching change.
The last & only time he fired a coach mid-season? Wade Phillips, after he lost by 38 points to Mike McCarthy’s Packers.
McCarthy’s Cowboys lost by 38 today @FOX4 #DallasCowboys pic.twitter.com/RwSuW9Rs2Y
— Jeff Kolb (@JeffKolbFOX4) October 14, 2024
On X, one jaded Cowboys fan predicted more “disappointment” and very little change before the off-season. In fact, the fan added that the franchise likely would “do this dance all over again next year.”
The Cowboys’ season will end in disappointment.
Mike McCarthy won’t be coming back.
They’ll reset their coaching staff.
Spend very little in free agency.
Hope for another good draft.And do this dance all over again next year.
This was always going to be the way.— Dan Rogers (@DannyPhantom24) October 14, 2024
In sum, McCarthy represents the convenient target of the moment. And perhaps his tenure does need to end.
When an organization experiences repeated failures over a prolonged period, however, the problem always goes to the top.
In like manner, the word-salad-spewing vice president constitutes a national embarrassment, but the real rot exists at the core of a system that elevated the likes of Harris to the top of a major party’s presidential ticket.
Thus, in the face of such spectacular failure, all we can say is, “Wow.”
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