Cowboys in Crisis: McCarthy Says Landry Would be…

You have heard about it a bazillion times. It’s the most crucial metric in the game of football. Games are won and lost, in most cases, because of it: Turnover margin.

There’s probably nothing that coaches care more about than that. That includes Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy, whose team sits at 3-4 after two months of the regular season.

A big reason why is turnover margin, in which the Cowboys rank 30th in the league. The details make it worse as the Cowboys are tied for the fifth-lowest takeaways, and the fourth most turnovers.

In other words, the offense is giving the ball away and the defense is doing close to nothing to make up for it.

“Personally, I’m very frustrated,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday. “I think that if you want to be known for something as a football team, it’s taking care of the football and taking it away. I know my experience in this league would reflect that. I quote (Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer) — Marty Schottenheimer is probably turning over in his grave right now watching us play, being minus 8.”

McCarthy’s comments echo Dak Prescott’s sentiments postgame when he said even if he didn’t need to play perfect for the Cowboys to win games, he was going to have to stop turning the ball over. Prescott has eight interceptions through seven games, he had nine in all of the 2023 season.

“It’s a focal point, but we can’t change yesterday; we can only work on today and improve moving forward, and that’s our mindset,” McCarthy added. “We know how to do it; we’ve done it.”

For the Cowboys, it’s a twofold problem. Asked if it was more important to take care of the ball than taking it away, McCarthy had a firm stance.

“I think it’s bigger on taking care of it because  if you take care of the football every single week then you know you’re never going to lose the turnover ratio, McCarthy explained. “I mean at worst it’ll be zero, so you have to take care of it.”

That doesn’t mean McCarthy is cutting Mike Zimmer’s struggling defense any slack as the Cowboys coach explained exactly why the team should have more takeaways than it does thus far. It’s not just about the takeaways themselves but opportunities to come up big.

“We keep track of not only takeaways but the takeaway opportunities, McCarthy said. “You’ve got to first be in position to take it away, and with that, that’s where the energy and the footwork and the proper angles come in. When you talk about the pursuit and finish of the defense and your coverage units, that’s how we train. The opportunities need to go up. We can improve there, because as those opportunities go up, the takeaways go up. We executed takeaways at a higher level the last three years, but our opportunities are not far off from the last couple of years. So, we’re getting there, but we’re not converting.”