Are Dallas Cowboys setting Mike McCarthy up for failure in final year of his contract?

Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy doesn’t need to say he is unhappy with his current contract situation.

What is understood doesn’t have to be explained.

Who wouldn’t want a new deal and job security beyond 2024?

Who wouldn’t want the ambiguity about ther future removed to ease the mindset of your family and young daughters who like their lives in North Texas.

And who wouldn’t want work rewarded, considering three straight 12-5 seasons, three straight trips to the playoffs and two division titles over the past three seasons — the best run by the franchise since the Cowboys had four straight seasons of least 12 wins from 1992-95 and three Super Bowl titles.

And there in lines the rub.

McCarthy’s Cowboys have won just one playoff game during this run, capped by the unfathomable 46-32 setback to the Green Packers last January when killing what was supposed to be the team’s best shot at reaching the NFC title game and the Super Bowl since Tony Romo went to Cabo and the top-seeded Cowboys allowed the New York Giants to steal their destiny in 2007.

The second-seeded Cowboys were the only home team to lose in the wild-card round last season and it came at the hands of McCarthy’s former team and to a quarterback in his first playoff game, in blowout fashion

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones initially offered two words when asked why McCarthy didn’t get a contract extension.

“Green Bay,” Jones said.

He continued on by saying how much he likes McCarthy

“Mike has shown me that I want to have him, and he’s qualified and he’s excellent and the players are excellent and he’s shown me that he could be our coach for years to come,” Jones said. “He sits next to me in the draft. I really call on him a lot. If you can’t get along with Mike McCarthy, you can’t get along.”

Jones even bristled when it was suggested that McCarthy was heading into 2024 as a lame-duck coach.

I don’t agree with you,” Jones said. “I understand the term and I understand how it fits. I don’t look at it that way. know that’s the fans’ sentiment. I know that for a fact that you don’t domino if you don’t [win a Super Bowl]. But if you get it, it’s glory hole. Oil and gas term of hitting the big well.”

But that is in fact McCarthy’s charge this season to keep his job.

He must get the glory hole, hit the big well by getting to at least the NFL title game if not the Super Bowl to get a contract extension.

Making matters worse is that the Cowboys are asking McCarthy to do better and go further than he did the the past three years with a seemingly lesser roster — they made no significant addition from the team that lost to Green Bay, while losing four or five starters to free-agency — in the midst of an environment of ambiguity.

McCarthy and the entire coaching staff are in the last years of their contract. So is All-Pro quarterback Dak Prescott, All-Pro receiver CeeDee Lamb, who is holding out of training camp, and roughly 30 players.

Add in Jones openly lauding six-time Super Bowl champion coach Bill Belichick, who was fired from the New England Patriots last season and remains a coaching free agent.

“I think he may be the best coach, certainly of my time in the NFL, and I happen to be part of a team that had the great Tom Landry, and I’d put him right there,” Jones said. “Bill’s a friend and a great coach.”

There have already been people trying to link Belichick to the Cowboys in 2025.

It all has McCarthy set up for failure in what is seemingly an untenable situation for him and his family.

McCarthy, however, is not looking at it that way.

He sees it as a challenge and the life of a football coach who knows they are facing their last season or game at any moment, regardless of how many years are left on their contract.

Coaches are hired to be fired, as the old adage says.

He’s dealt with the disappointment of not getting a new deal and braced his family for what possibly lies ahead.

But now that he is camp, his only focused on doing whatever he can to help the Cowboys get better and hopefully go farther in 2024.

He has no interesting in talking about the ambiguity of the upcoming season.

“We’re excited and energized about this opportunity that’s in front of us, and it starts with this training camp,” McCarthy said. “Gosh, just to be here in Oxnard and to be excited about this next opportunity. And that’s the reality of competing in the National Football League. The contract conversations, we talked about that back in the spring, and that’s really where it lies with me, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the word ‘contract’ before talking about it right now in quite some time. That’s not the way we’re wired, and we can’t be wired that way.

“I get what’s happened in the past and the frustrations of the past, but we’re past that. We’re energized with what’s in front of us and the reality of the work we have to do to put ourselves in position to answer those questions next year. The only thing we’ve been guaranteed is 17 games.”

Heading into a season in the last year of his contract, that is all that is being afforded to McCarthy.

It’s doesn’t matter if he’s being set up for failure.

It’s glory hole or bust.