Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy enters the season on a seat so hot he’s possibly gotten used to it, like Bart Simpson’s intriguing take on hell.
How will McCarthy stave of termination and secure an extension? By running.
Not literally. Not himself. He says he’s going to embrace the running game.
“We will be good running the football and that’s because we’re going to commit to it,” McCarthy said on 105.3 The Fan, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com.
That’s fine. But it’s also a little off. You don’t become good at running the ball by simply committing to it. If the running game is going nowhere, committing to it should get the coach committed. It has to be effective, which encourages using it more and more.
Will it be? They’ll need to block. And they’ll need to hope Ezekiel Elliott can turn back the clock. And that Rico Dowdle can help carry the load.
From time to time, one of the smartest-person-in-the-room types will spout off stats about a team’s success when it runs the ball a certain number of times or for a certain number of yards. That’s very misleading. A team doesn’t have success simply because it runs. Successful running combined with commitment to successful running results in a victory and, coincidentally, more than (for example) a certain number of attempts and a certain number of yards..
So if the Cowboys are able to run effectively then, yes, they should commit to it. If they’re not moving the chains, they should rely on a passing game fueled by a receiver making $34 million per year and a quarterback who, if he stays, will be making $60 million or more per year.