3 strengths and 2 weaknesses of Mike McCarthy heading into 2023

Mike McCarthy strength: Regular season success

It's not enough to just have regular season success, but how far did that take Jason Garrett? Jerry Jones doesn't like to make sweeping changes if he doesn't have to. We have seen that in terms of his head coaching choices, but we have also seen it in other areas of the team.

He doesn't like to give up on former first-round draft picks. You could tell how painful the process of moving on from Tony Romo was for him.

Loyalty seems like a very big deal to Jerry Jones and regular season success can be both a blessing and a curse in that regard. On the one hand, if you're winning a lot of regular season games, the team is going to be relevant and when the Cowboys are relevant, the NFL is simply a better product overall. When you're winning regular season games, it also gives you hope that something could eventually happen in the playoffs.

There are some teams that have zero tolerance for playoff incompetence. There are also some teams that might build a head coach a statue outside the stadium if they had the type of regular season success that we've seen from Mike McCarthy in Dallas. Fans might not like it, but McCarthy's regular season success is undoubtedly a strength of his when it comes to simply giving the Cowboys a chance, and you can sense how much that matters to Jerry Jones.

Winning a playoff game this past year, even against a lowly Bucs team, also played huge for McCarthy. It's showing gradual steps forward for this Cowboys team. Jerry Jones is clearly not overly impatient, and McCarthy's regular season success has proven to be a major strength for him holding his job up to this point.