As the offseason approaches quickly for the Dallas Cowboys, a lot of the attention has been geared toward if head coach Mike McCarthy – who is in the final season of his five-year deal – will return in 2025.

While most of the dialogue during the season has focused on owner and general manager Jerry Jones’ decision to have him back, recent dialogue has shifted toward the potential other opportunities that McCarthy could have on the open market.

The 61-year-old McCarthy has remained constant when addressing his contract status throughout the season by deflecting to the task at hand.

And even with just one task left in Sunday’s game against the Washington Commanders, that remained the talking point on Monday when asked if he wanted to return to the Cowboys next season.

“I do appreciate the opportunity to speak on it,” McCarthy said. “I think the focus [is] I need to make sure I’m doing exactly what I’m asking everyone else to do. We need to finish the race. It’s been a challenging year, based on our contract situation for coaches. It’s stating the obvious, but we’ll have time to talk about that next week.”

McCarthy isn’t alone, as his entire staff of assistants and coordinators are on expiring deals as well. He acknowledged that the families of the coaches makes the wonder of what’s ahead a little more anxious for everybody, but he knows that it’s close to coming to a conclusion.

“We need to take a step back after next week and obviously a lot of decisions have to be made,” he said. “A lot of business decisions have to be made because of our contract situation and that’s what we’ll do.”

Key players such as Dak Prescott and Micah Parsons have publicly voiced their support for McCarthy’s return in recent weeks.

And while McCarthy remains insistent on focusing on week 18 and Sunday’s finale against Washington, he did take time to appreciate that support.

“Thank you,” he said on what he would say to those players. “Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s just a reflection of what we have here. It’s a reflection of, everybody talks about culture and I’m not up here to give a bunch of buzzwords, but we do things the right way, I can attest to that.”

Nick Harris is the Dallas Cowboys beat reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He has experience working on the beat for DallasCowboys.com and previous work experience at Yahoo Sports/Rivals and 247Sports.