As the offseason approaches quickly for the Dallas Cowboys, a lot of the attention has been geared toward if head coach Mike McCarthy \u2013 who is in the final season of his five-year deal \u2013 will return in 2025.<\/p>\n
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While most of the dialogue during the season has focused on owner and general manager Jerry Jones\u2019 decision to have him back, recent dialogue has shifted toward the potential other opportunities that McCarthy could have on the open market.<\/p>\n
The 61-year-old McCarthy has remained constant when addressing his contract status throughout the season by deflecting to the task at hand.<\/p>\n
And even with just one task left in Sunday\u2019s game against the Washington Commanders, that remained the talking point on Monday when asked if he wanted to return to the Cowboys next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do appreciate the opportunity to speak on it,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cI think the focus [is] I need to make sure I\u2019m doing exactly what I\u2019m asking everyone else to do. We need to finish the race. It\u2019s been a challenging year, based on our contract situation for coaches. It\u2019s stating the obvious, but we\u2019ll have time to talk about that next week.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n McCarthy isn\u2019t 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\u2019s ahead a little more anxious for everybody, but he knows that it\u2019s close to coming to a conclusion.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to take a step back after next week and obviously a lot of decisions have to be made,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of business decisions have to be made because of our contract situation and that\u2019s what we\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Key players such as Dak Prescott and Micah Parsons have publicly voiced their support for McCarthy\u2019s return in recent weeks.<\/p>\n And while McCarthy remains insistent on focusing on week 18 and Sunday\u2019s finale against Washington, he did take time to appreciate that support.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you,\u201d he said on what he would say to those players. \u201cYeah, absolutely. I think it\u2019s just a reflection of what we have here. It\u2019s a reflection of, everybody talks about culture and I\u2019m not up here to give a bunch of buzzwords, but we do things the right way, I can attest to that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the offseason approaches quickly for the Dallas Cowboys, a lot of the attention has been geared toward if head coach Mike McCarthy \u2013 who is in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"yoast_head":"\n