Is Cowboys Mike McCarthy a scaredy cat or crazy like a fox?
Looking around the league, Patrick Mahomes plays. Josh Allen plays. Jalen Hurts, Kirk Cousins, Aaron Rodgers and Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott do not. There are a ton of different thought processes at play around the NFL as the coaching staffs navigate the preseason schedule.
Is it more important to ensure health at all costs, or should players play football and get into a rhythm as soon as possible with the teammates they will battle with in the trenches?
Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy has chosen the latter, sitting Prescott and all of the key players on the Cowboys through the exhibition slate. Down to three games, the amount of snaps to evaluate the bottom of the roster is more limited than ever, and not only does McCarthy protect his key guys, but he gets extra intel on the middle and back ends of the roster. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so getting more reps for guys who will be a part of the game-day chain against other team’s better players is a smart move.
But is it smarter than letting the key guys get into a rhythm?
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The team looked lethargic and out of sorts in their Week 1 loss to Tampa Bay last season, after McCarthy pulled the same move. And the lost cost them. Dallas wins that game, and they go into the last week of the season against Washington tied with the Philadelphia Eagles atop the division at 13-3 instead of a game back at 12-4. Perhaps they earn a bye and play at home in the divisional round instead of ending their season with four straight road games.
The move also backfired as Prescott, who was just getting his feet planted underneath him in live game action, was lost for five games when he injured his hand. Of course that injury could’ve happened if he had gotten some rust knocked off during training camp, but not getting real practice time in real game situations ended up costing Dallas any sense of cohesion.
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The opposite side is in order for Prescott to play, Dallas would have to play their starting offensive linemen to not expose him to egregious harm. There’s no way they’d trot Prescott out there with Asim Richards, Brock Hoffman, Matt Farniok, Josh Ball and Matt Waletzko as his five protectors.
But with the OL learning a new blocking system, even that could have led to miscommunications and risks the team would rather avoid.
However that coin gets flipped on its head, too.
Dallas brought in Mike Solari as the new offensive line coach, Solari does things much differently than Joe Philbin, and the big dogs of Tyron Smith, Tyler Smith, Tyler Biadasz, Zack Martin and Terence Steele are going to be tasked with taking on the New York Giants’ strong defensive line with no in-game experience in the new system.
It’s circular.
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The team is a contender, but their division rival made it to the Super Bowl last season by virtue of winning the division. The Cowboys were good enough to win six of their next seven games after the opening dud, but that one dud came back to bite them.
Did they go 12-4 through 16 games because of their offseason process or in spite of it?
And there’s no easy answer here because on a team with 22 starters (really 25), there are so many moving parts its hard to predict which method is right. Only in retrospect can things be evaluated and even then, there’s confirmation bias at play.
Football is funny that way, but it’s no joke that McCarthy and the Cowboys must win big this postseason or the coach will be second-guessing his methods in another city during the next offseason.
