McCarthy not returning as Cowboys’ coach

DALLAS — Mike McCarthy is not returning as coach of the Dallas Cowboys, who are going on three decades since their last Super Bowl title, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Monday.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because a decision hasn’t been announced. They said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and McCarthy agreed to part ways. It’s possible the two sides could reconcile, but McCarthy will now speak to other teams as a free agent.

The coach’s contract expired following a 7-10 season. Dallas was 12-5 each of the three years before that, but still hasn’t been past the divisional round of the NFC playoffs since its last Super Bowl at the end of the 1995 season.

McCarthy’s contract expired Jan. 8 and the Cowboys have an exclusive negotiation window through Tuesday, but the parties decided to split ahead of the deadline.

At least one other NFL team asked during that time about talking to the 61-year-old coach who won a Super Bowl with Green Bay.

Next season will be the 30th for the Cowboys since winning the last of their five Super Bowl titles.

Before taking the Dallas job after a full season out of coaching, McCarthy was with the Packers for 13 seasons and had a 125-77-2 record from 2006-18. He was 10-8 in the playoffs and led Green Bay to a Super Bowl title at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Cowboys, 14 years ago.

There were also three other NFC championship games for McCarthy in Green Bay, and that is what Jones envisioned — and more — when he hired the coach in 2020 after Jason Garrett never got that far in his 10 years.

McCarthy finished with a 50-38 record in Dallas, including a 1-3 mark in the playoffs. That included last season, when the Cowboys were NFC East champions and had won 16 consecutive home games before trailing by 32 points in the fourth quarter of a 48-32 wild-card loss to the seventh-seeded Packers.

Dallas played the final nine games this season without franchise quarterback Dak Prescott because of a torn hamstring. Top receiver CeeDee Lamb, seven-time Pro Bowl guard Zack Martin, cornerback Trevon Diggs and rushing defending DeMarcus Lawrence also finished the season on injured reserve.

Garrett had the franchise’s second-longest coaching tenure. Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry was the coach for the Cowboys’ first 29 seasons, the same number of seasons they have now gone since winning a Super Bowl. Jones fired two-time Super Bowl winner Landry when he bought the Cowboys before the 1989 season.

Only 12 NFL coaches have more career regular-season wins than McCarthy’s 174, which is still far behind Don Shula’s record 328. The only active coaches with more wins than McCarthy are Andy Reid (302 wins over 29 seasons) and Mike Tomlin (183 wins in 18 seasons).

Jones’ next coach will be his ninth. He hired Jimmy Johnson from the University of Miami, and the Cowboys won back-to-back Super Bowls in the 1992-93 seasons before the college teammates at Arkansas had an acrimonious split.

Barry Switzer replaced Johnson, a Pro Football Hall of Fame coach, and won a Super Bowl in his second season but was fired two years later following a 6-10 season. Bill Parcells, another Hall of Famer, led the Cowboys to the playoffs twice in four seasons from 2003-06 but lost in the wild-card round both times.