For now, Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy is simply trying to avoid the worst possible outcome.

If this is the end and you are Mike McCarthy, what would you want it to look like? I think those dark thoughts explain why he became more passionate late Monday night after another disappointing one-sided defeat at home, as he talked about winning, about the need to win games, about how the effort to win is all that matters.

The Cowboys head to Washington on Sunday, and I can’t remember the last time Dallas lost to this opponent by 10 points. But the Cowboys, 3-7 and five straight losers, will be underdogs in every game they play the rest of the way, with the exception of a Thanksgiving home game with the New York Giants and possibly a trip to Carolina in mid-December . As for McCarthy, who has no contract after this season and virtually no chance of earning one if Dallas doesn’t make the playoffs, he’s trying to avoid the worst season of his long NFL career.

In his 18 full seasons with the Packers and Cowboys, McCarthy never posted a team record worse than 6-10. Even in 2018, when Green Bay pulled the plug, the Packers were 4-7-1, so they were likely in for another 6-10 type of season. The extended schedule has been McCarthy’s friend the last three years, with Game 17 allowing him to become the only Cowboys coach ever to win 12 games in three straight seasons. Tom Landry would have been close, but he was thwarted by the players’ strike in 1982, and Jimmie Johnson clearly would have had a chance if he and Jerry Jones hadn’t parted ways after back-to-back Super Bowl wins.

Still, Game 17 put McCarthy in a class of his own, even if it was just a regular-season record that never saved him here. With just one playoff win in five years, McCarthy will ultimately leave with the worst record of his career unless the Cowboys find an unlikely path to four wins in their final seven games.

There are other traits to consider as well.

Dallas has lost five games in a row. What if the Cowboys do what is expected on Sunday and lose to a talented Washington team that could have had a healthier Jaden Daniels away from a strong playoff run in Dan Quinn’s first season as head coach? What if they follow it up with a loss to Tommy DeVito and the Giants next Thursday? How bad can this thing be?

Do you think you’ve seen rock bottom for the 2024 Cowboys? Don’t be too sure.

Connected:How bad is this Cowboys losing streak? Take a look at the trail of Dallas’ fall.

The looming possibility is that the Cowboys will lose their first 12-game series in a single season. The original 1960 Cowboys—an expansion team so limited by the rules of the day that they had no draft picks in their first season—lost their first 10 games before securing a 0-11 tie with New York. 1. So they had a 12-game winless streak, which this team would have matched had they not gotten into the win column somewhere down the line.

However, the only series that really matters to fans is the one McCarthy is looking to extend to six. That’s how many Cowboys head coaches failed to make it to the Super Bowl (or NFC Championship Game) after the franchise’s first three head coaches all won the Lombardi Trophy. It’s obvious to just about everyone that the magic is gone, that different coaches can have different levels of success if they come in when a club’s scouting department is at the top of the draft. These things tend to come and go a little more often than one would like, and the days of the Cowboys using free agency as a viable roster tool are long gone.

This is a great place to coach if you want exposure, although you will be constantly under the control of the owner/general manager, to the point of having to hold competing press conferences after games. If you’re looking to add to your trophy cabinet, as McCarthy hoped to do after winning the only Super Bowl ever played at AT&T Stadium 14 seasons ago, it’s a tougher task in Dallas.

And that’s something McCarthy has had to give up entirely as he looks for ways to win games with Cooper Rush and Rico Dowdle on his home field.

McCarthy’s history and determination not to go out with terrible results are the reasons why we’re unlikely to see Trey Lance starting a football game unless it’s very late in the season. It may be hard to tell from the last two games, but Rush gives the team a better chance to win. McCarthy needs to help him by not eliminating future field goals like he did Monday night. You can’t coach a beat-up roster like a regular NFL team. The idea of ​​simply going forward and scoring from 31 yards out – which is where Dallas advanced after a Houston penalty on Brandon Aubrey’s 64-yard field goal – is not a realistic plan.

Connected:Everything You Need to Know About Cowboys-Commanders: Dallas Takes First Look at Jayden Daniels

In two games without Dak Prescott, Dallas has scored one touchdown, with a 64-yard pass to KaVontae Turpin. In short, this is a crime in Dallas. Injuries to the offensive line and facing Quinn and former Cowboys at Maryland aren’t the best way to improve McCarthy’s performance.

His last season here will be bad. He’s just trying to keep it from becoming a terrible record.

X: @TimCowlishaw

More coverage of the Cowboys from The Dallas Morning News can be found here..