Dan Orlovsky: Jerry Jones is Chasing Comfort, Not Super Bowls, By Not Firing Mike McCarthy

On Wednesday, Jerry Jones announced the Dallas Cowboys would not be moving on from Mike McCarthy after they got pantsed by the Green Bay Packers in front of their home crowd on the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs. This is a matter of great consternation for Cowboys fans everywhere given it is the third consecutive early playoff exit that came with the added bonus of being quite embarrassing for one reason or another. In fact, a strong argument can be made that this past Sunday's performance is quite a few degrees more embarrassing than the Dak Prescott slide debacle in 2021 or Ezekiel Elliott cosplaying as a center in 2022. So it is more than a bit surprising Jones would ride with McCarthy, even after acknowledging the Cowboys owner has shown a tendency to stick with his guys no matter what.

Perhaps unfortunately for the neutral fan it also means the Cowboys will be at the center of discussion all day today and tomorrow despite the upcoming divisional round games. On Get Up this morning, Dan Orlovsky tackled the topic and made an astute point while explaining why he felt it was the wrong decision to let McCarthy ride for another year-- in defending why he's keeping the head coach, Jerry Jones revealed that he is more interested in the comfort of winning regularly than he is winning big.

A bit damning but true. Jones doesn't seem to have any interest in taking risks with his team. Sure, it is a remarkable achievement that McCarthy walked into the building and ripped off three straight 12-win seasons. The current discourse may be downplaying just how hard that is to do. But, to borrow a classic sports trope, this is the definition of insanity if Jones truly expects to win a Super Bowl with McCarthy. He has proven on three straight occasions that he is not a coach who is capable of preparing his team to make a deep playoff run. That isn't just going to change next season, especially since the circumstances could not have been more ideal this year!

The Cowboys stole the division title from the Philadelphia Eagles in the final weeks of the season. Doing so secured the No. 2 overall seed, ensuring that they would get two home playoff games and wouldn't have to see their boogeymen (the San Francisco 49ers) until the NFC Championship Game. The defense was good. The offense, better. They drew a 9-8 team in the Wild Card round starting a quarterback making his playoff debut. It is really hard to draw up a scenario more optimal for Dallas to make a run than that. And not only did they lose, but they lost badly.

Jones sees it as a bad result to a good process. It's hard to sit here and call the process bad when it has led to three double-digit win seasons and playoff appearances. That's Jones' logic, and it is sound in many ways. But ultimately sports are a results-oriented business and if Jones really cared about the biggest result of all then he would have fired McCarthy.

But he didn't. McCarthy will rule the sidelines for one more season. Once he bows out early again we'll see how truly committed Jones is to winning another ring.