Mike McCarthy plans to reduce Dak Prescott’s turnovers, make Dallas Cowboys more efficient

It’s safe to say, Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy feels like a kid again.

Or at least a kid with a new toy.

After three years of being the CEO of the Cowboys football team as a walk-around head coach, he is back to calling plays again. After deciding to move on from offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, McCarthy is installing his west coast philosophies into the offense.

It has McCarthy all smiles and extremely busy.

So busy that he only spent one day at the NFL Scouting Combine. On Wednesday morning, he flew to Indianapolis on a private plane. After fulfilling media obligations and taking the local Cowboys beat writers out to lunch, he flew back to Texas in the afternoon.

“Yeah, this is the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been in Dallas,” said McCarthy who prefers to fly private these days and will do so again when he takes his daughter to a volleyball tournament in Florida next week. “I ]mean, just to be in the meeting room again with the coaches full time. We’ve been [going] 8 to 11:30 and break, then you’ve been talking nothing but scheme. I haven’t had that.”

After calling plays for the majority of his 13 Green Bay seasons, including a Super Bowl title in 2010, McCarthy hasn’t called plays since his final season with the Packers in 2018.

How’s he been preparing to call plays? He’s doing it in the shower, and on car rides during his free time. He wants to revamp the Cowboys offense, thus the reason he decided to spend just one day at the combine. It’s his shortest stint here of his career — except in 2019 when he was out of coaching.

But it’s not about him, it’s about what he thinks is best for the Cowboys, the offense and quarterback Dak Prescott.

In the last three seasons under Moore, the Cowboys offense ranked 14th in 2020 when Prescott missed 11 games with a fractured ankle, first in 2021 when Prescott set franchise record for passing touchdowns with 37 and 11th in 2022 when Prescott led the NFL with a career-high 15 interceptions.

After a second straight 12-5 season ended with a loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the playoffs, McCarthy decided that changing some offensive philosophies — ultimately, moving on from Moore — was best way for the Cowboys to take the next step.

“Obviously, I think Kellen did an excellent job if you look at the way we played over the course of the last three years,” McCarthy said. “As a head coach, every head coach has a vision of how you want the football team to play, what they look like. Our complementary football formula I felt was the best this year of the three years, so I think every three, four, five years into your offense, you need to make changes and adjustments, tendencies and things like that. I just felt this was a good time to make that change.”

McCarthy said he is not looking to make wholesale changes, pegging the number at 30 to 35 percent.

They are not changing the language but they will change some of the blocking schemes in the run and pass games and route patterns to more in line with his West Coast offense rather than Moore’s timing-basing game system from the Jason Garrett era.

“How will it look different? I don’t know. I guess just wait and see,” McCarthy said. I just think like anything everybody has plays, everybody has concepts. Every player and coach, you have tendencies in this league. There’s some things conceptually that I believe in more in situational football than may have happened the last three years.

“Just look at our run totals the last three years. We were a different offense in ’22 than we were in 2020. That was part of the evaluation of being more balanced, more complementary football, not as wide open in the dropbacks. You look at all those things.”

McCarthy said he is wired different than Moore, who he says wants to light up the scoreboard up on offense.

He plans to run the ball more to rest his defense, which he believes will yield better results for the football team.

“I don’t desire to be the No. 1 offense in the league,” McCarthy said. “I want to be the No. 1 team in the league with a number of wins and a championship. And if we gotta give up some production and take care of the ball better to get that, then that’s what we’ll do, because we have a really good defense. I mean, you can’t get to the championship game without defense. I mean, that’s been my personal experience. I’ve won one Super Bowl. I’ve had one Top 5 defense in 17 years. So the facts are in the pudding. It’s just the reality of this league.”

McCarthy said that NFC-East division rival Philadelphia Eagles is a perfect example. Philadelphia tied for the league’s best record, finishing fifth in rushing yards and first rushing touchdowns before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII.

“Run game is not sexy,” McCarthy said. “It doesn’t get you the headlines and all that but you got to win the time of possession. Look at what Philadelphia did this year, Jesus Christ. Scoring on the first drive of the game, and the way they ran the ball. I mean, they kept that defense fresh. That was a good defense.”

McCarthy believes the changes will help Prescott cut down on his mistakes and be more efficient as the Cowboys will do a better job protecting him and keeping him out of bad situations.

Too many of Prescott’s interceptions were based on poor decisions and being too aggressive.

In addition to changing blocking schemes to give a tick longer to throw the ball and running ball more, the philosophy changes will help Prescott because there will be change the Cowboys’ mannerisms on offense. They had become too stale and too predictable being in the same scheme.

A new voice in quarterback room will also benefit Prescott as well as the Cowboys. And Prescott is looking forward to it, per McCarthy.

But make no mistake about, McCarthy remains fully committed to Prescott as quarterback.

“I think No. 1 we all can use a new voice,” McCarthy said. “We all can use a sense of motivation and challenge and so forth. This is a new challenge for him. These are his words: he’s very excited about it. I just think like anything he’s had a chance to go from the different variations of the offense that was in place. He’s getting ready to take another turn as far as a variation of what we’re getting ready to go.

“My decision to stay with his concepts and so forth is still intact because I wouldn’t have did what I did in 2020 if I still didn’t believe in him. And we obviously as an organization, myself included, feel very strongly about him as our future and we will definitely build this thing around him.”