Mike McCarthy makes rookie coaching mistake before Week 14 rivalry game

The Washington Football Team will play host to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday in the franchise’s most important home game in years.

There’s a lot riding on this fixture. With a win, Washington will have an excellent chance to supplant Dallas atop the division. Lose and those odds will plummet, and a Wild Card berth suddenly becomes top priority.

Given what’s at stake, Washington really doesn’t need extra motivation from fans, former players, and local radio hosts.

However, what about the head coach from the other side offering up some wholly unnecessary bulletin-board material? Surely not even a HC with Mike McCarthy’s experience would be foolish enough to make such a gesture right?

Wrong!

So wrong, in fact, that it’s worse than we thought possible.

Washington Football Team fans will love this quote from Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy

Turns out clock management isn’t McCarthy’s biggest shortcoming anymore, because it’s virtually impossible to handle the media worse than this. The 58-year-old, in his second year as the Cowboys’ skipper, guaranteed a win.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Don’t give an upcoming opponent further incentive to beat you to a pulp on game day. It’s literally an unwritten rule of coaching, especially ahead of a rivalry game with weighty playoff implications. Let fans and talking heads do the trash-talking. Based on what we’ve seen on Twitter the last few days, there’s plenty of that to go around thanks to Cowboys fans being as insufferable as ever.

Turns out their HC can be lumped into that category, too.

Is this McCarthy’s attempt to rally the locker room after he missed some time on the COVID list? Does he secretly have money on Washington?

It’d be one thing if the Cowboys were steamrolling every team in their path, but they’ve lost three of their last five. The only reason Washington has a pulse in the division race is because Dallas has failed to put a stranglehold on it.

Does McCarthy not realize that Washington is the hottest team in the NFL not named the Patriots, Chiefs or Dolphins? We honestly have no idea what was going through his mind when he made this audacious declaration.

What we do know, though, is that clip should be played with maximum volume on every television and through every speaker at FedEx Field leading up to kickoff. That includes the locker room. Let the players hear what the Cowboys boss thinks of Washington and his team’s chances of walking out of Landover with a win.

Safe to say Ron Rivera’s pregame speech will be one for the record books.

Thanks a bunch, McCarthy. This is just what the doctor ordered.