Talkin' Cowboys: ESPN's Rob Demovsky 1-on-1

McCarthy's coaching style. He's Robbed Hmobski of ESPN and if ESPN NFL Nation Reporter been covering the Packers for a long time and covering Mike McCarthy for a long time too. How you doing today, Rob? Thanks for having me, you know, in turn of covering the Cowboys right now, I can't think of anybody better to draw on experience in dealing with Mike McCarthy in the past. Can you just tell us how long you've been covering the Packers because it

dates back beyond Aaron Rodgers, beyond Mike McCarthy. Yeah, my first season was nineteen ninety seven, which was the year after they won the Super Bowl, and then they went back to the Super Bowl my first year, lost to the to the Denver Broncos. Mike McCarthy came to Green Bay two years later as the quarterbacks coach under Ray Roads for just one year and then you know, probably

never thought I'd cross passed with Mike McCarthy again. And five years later, six years later when they had a coaching search again and behold, Mike McCarthy was the guy. So you know, for us, we've because of the pandemic, we've met Mike twice, I believe in person January when he first got the job, and then at the out combine. So we really haven't been able to get to know him very much. Just can you tell us from your experience what kind of coach and what kind of guy

the Cowboys have gotten here? Well, I can tell you that at Starbucks, which is about mile right between his house and my house, he likes the vente skinny vanilla latte. The Green Bay is is an interesting place. It's obviously a lot smaller than Dallas. So Mike was a guy who you saw around town all the time. I mean, he was you know, he was not just the coach

of the Green Bay Packers. He was Mike McCarthy, who might be at a high school basketball game with one of his stepsons or at the y MCA with one of his daughters and they're you know, their dance classes or gymnastics or whatever. So Mike is a guy that is is very approachable. He's he is as I've covered I think it's five or six head coaches since I've covered the Packers, and he's as quote unquote normal of a guy as any of them. I mean, you know,

Mike Holmgren was this larger than life figure. Ray Rhoads was only here for for a year, so you didn't really know. Mike Sherman was this sort of history professor kind of guy. Matt Laflours this kind of young, uh you know, cool hip kid. And Mike McCarthy is just the most regular guy of all of them. I mean his his dad owned a bar in Pittsburgh for crying out loud, you know, I mean, he just is, He just is. He's you and me. He's the everyman. He just happens to also be really smart and really good

with quarterbacks and offenses. But he is as as normal of a guy as you're going to get in the NFL head coaching business, which is not a normal business, as you know, absolutely not. Um. I know you did the first sit down interview with him after he was relieved of his duties with the Packers and twenty nine and he took the year off. What can you tell us just about his his mindset back then and maybe how things ended in Green Bay, maybe motivating him with

his new job here in Dallas. Oh yeah, there's no question. I mean obviously he was hurt, um, you know, disappointed how it ended here. I think he knew going into that last season that you know, things might change, just because there had been so much change in the organization. So I think there was that stingingness to not being able to sort of see it through, you know, the end of that season. But once he got over that, you could sense the hunger and the motivation and the

desire really to do this again. And and I remember sitting in his office in probably February of that you know, first off season where he was out of it, maybe March, you know, he would have normally gone to the combine, wasn't going, and he had about ten computer screens all a around him and was calling up everything from quarterbacks tools that he had run in Kansas City with Joe Montana, and he literally showing the video of Doe Montana doing five step drops and pivots too on the scret to

the fire right screen. There was every play that every offense ran in the NFL that season, and he could have cut it. He was going through him, you know, concept by concept, So I mean this was this was a guy who wasn't just sitting around waiting for an opportunity. He was sitting around preparing for the next opportunity. And um, you know, I don't know that he in his in his heart of hearts, ever thought he could be so

lucky to coach the Cowboys. I mean, because you're talking about going from the Green Bay Packers to the Dallas Cowboys. But I think he knew he was going to get another opportunity. Again, I just don't know that Dallas was ever like, you know, he ever thought, Oh, of the Dallas, that's the one I'm gonna get, right, He obviously the Packers from six through eighteen until the end. Near the end of the eighteen season, he did talk about how

it's it's two different iconic franchises. He's going from one to the other, and now he's working with the Jones family, Jerry Jones and Stephen Jones. How do you think that will work in terms of decision making collaborating based on how it worked in Green Bay? Obviously it's a different dynamic. Right to be honest, I think it's everything that he wants because in Green Bay he had to be the face of everything. Ted Thompson was the general manager, very

good personnel guy, but not a public facing figure. I mean Ted when they went going back all the way to the Brett fire saga where five wanted to come back and Ted Thompson had drafted Aaron Rodgers and wanted to move on. I mean Mike McCarthy maybe wasn't the main decision maker on that stuff, but he had to be the four. He had to answer all the questions.

Same thing when when Ted would make free agent moves or not make free agent moves, which was something they very rarely did, and Mike always had to answer for everything in the organization. As you know, there's no owner here. It's a publicly owned team. The team president Mark Murphy essentially acts as the owner, but his philosophy, he was

always to, you know, not be out in front. And I know in talking to Mike he said, the next opportunity, I get it's going to have to be more of a group effort in terms of how things are presented publicly. I think this it's a great opportunity for him because he can really focus on the coaching aspect and the managing of a team, which is what he's best at.

And you know, Jerry and Stephen can be the forward facing people, but when it comes to the fans and the and the media media especially, Mike doesn't always have to answer questions for things that he didn't have say over interesting, very interesting. One ask you a couple of questions, maybe on the philosophy side, for as a coach on the field that you referenced you said he's really good

with quarterbacks. We know that you mentioned Montana going all the way back to when he was a young assistant. Got the end of tail end of Brett Farn's career. And I know Aaron Rodgers deserves the bulk of the credit for what's going to be a Hall of Fame career at the end of it, But what kind of a teacher is he as a two quarterbacks for fans that quarter Yeah, his quarterback school is legendary really. I mean, like just watching him work with Montana, watching him work

with Aaron Brooks in New Orleans. I mean he really helped mold Aaron Brooks, who was a mid round pick, a fourth round pick, I believe by the Packers traded him to New Orleans, and he took Aaron Brooks because remember he was Jim Haslett was the head coach there in New Orleans, and Jim Haslett was a defensive guy, so Mike was basically head coach of the offense, and you know, really turned Brooks into a good quarterback. I think people forget about five is the year before Mike

got to Green Bay. Five was a disaster. I mean he had thrown twenty nine picks. They went four and twelve, and everyone thought five had just gone off the rails and there was no raining him back in. And two years later he had five. I think he had cut his interceptions from twenty nine to thirteen. They've gone. They went to the NFC Championship game, and he really rained

him in. All the while he and his staff were working to prepare Rogers for you know, I mean, remember when Aaron Rodgers came out, he carried that ball like way up here by his ear and it was such a weird throwing formation, and McCarthy and his offensive staff really changed that. So he is very detail oriented. He if I've heard him say it once, I've heard him say it a thousand times. It's all about the quarterback. That's what he's told us too, that he's got to

build the offense to fit the quarter back. And obviously Dak Prescott is in the news down here, was staying a franchise tag, and everything tied to the Cowboys right now is how to set everything up to have Dak has as much successive as possibly can. So obviously a big reason why Mike was hired. Um sticking with the offense a little bit. I know Kellen Moore. Kellen Moore is still the offensive coordinator. Mike, I'm sure have a

have a hint in what's called. He's got a reputation in Green Bay in the past as as more of a pass oriented play caller. Makes sense with Aaron Rodgers as your quarterback, m how fair is that? And do you think you know was that more of a personnel matter for him while he was coaching in Green Bay. If you look at it, they never had a Zeke Elliot, that's for sure. I mean, who does. I guess there's not a lot of people do. But they never really had like a workhorse running back. I mean they had

in the late two thousands. In the two thousand and ten with the Super Bowl team, they had Ryan Grant who had a couple of thousand yard seasons. They had Eddie Lacy in the two thirteen fourteen type range. He was a thousand yard back. But but Mike, Mike believe that if you don't have a guy that can carry it twenty five times a day a game, and you don't want to wear a guy out who may not be able to handle that physically, then you don't do it till the end of the season. But go look

at his record from December on through the playoffs. They really did become a running team later in the year. I mean the run of the Super Bowl. I mean they were decimated by injuries and they ended up with James Starks, a rookie, and in one of those playoff games he had over one hundred yards. I can't remember if it was the wildcard game. I think it was a wildcard game against Philadelphia. I have Philadelphia. I mean they kind of turned into that a little bit so

he can morph into it. But he believes in the West Coast system, quick passes, winning matchups. There's not a ton of scheming guys to get open, so you better have good receivers, and Dallas does. I mean, there's no question about that. So I do think it was a little bit the personnel he had to work with here, but I also think they gave him the personnel that fit his offense. It's a little bit of a two way three. But I'm really curious to see, you know,

how they do become, how his offense does more. When you have a running back by Galliot who is so dominant, it will be interesting. And he said, you know, Zeke's gonna be a huge part of it. If you go back, I guess to the Saints days when he was the OC there. Ricky Williams was a guy that got three hundred carries a season, so you can trace it back beyond Green Bay. I guess one last one for you. A lot of uncertainty about the NFL right now with

the training camp hoping to start on time. I was wondering what you thought about the way Mike handled the lockout, which I guess is the only comparable situation in the last ten years leading into I believe twenty eleven, and how we handled that, and how do you think that might be able to where he can prepare his guys as best as possible with no rule off season. I remember talking to Mike in late June early July that summer, so similar time to right now, and they still didn't

know when they were going to come back. It was a It was at one of his charity golf outings, and he said, he goes, the team that figures out how to get ready quickest is going to have the best chance. And that season the Packers went fifteen and one. I mean, they came out of the gates and they were coming off the Super Bowl, so obviously had a

really good team. And I remember all the criticism that Rogers and the offensive guy's face because they didn't do twity workouts on their own, like I mean, you know, they were I know, I remember they were. I think Tom Brady and a bunch of the top quarterbacks, Roethlisberger, they were holding these workouts and Packers never did anything. The players never did it, and they go out in Week one. They opened in that Thursday night, you know,

NFL opener because they were the Super Bowl chance. I think they scored forty two points in the Saints, and I remember Rogers saying, well, a boy, maybe if we would have got had some offseason workouts, we might have been better on offense. Forty two points and they hit the ground running. The one thing you'll know about Mike and get to learn about him is he is ultra, ultra detailed when it comes to scheduling. He's always tweaking things.

I mean, they know they had a lot of success here for I mean what they made the playoffs eight straight years, and I'd be willing to say that six of those eight years they used a different type of practice schedule, training camp schedule. Things never stayed the same. And I think that will benefit the Cowboys in this because he's been through every possible situation as far as preparing a team, and he'll he'll admit some years they didn't come out of the camp ready to go. There

were plenty of years. I can remember the ri E Lax season, the relax where Rogers said, hey, we're gonna be fine. They were one and two and they ended up going to the NFC Championship game that was twenty fourteen. So he'll figure it out one way or another. He

will definitely do it. He spent the bulk of his time in Green Bay, about two miles from where I'm sitting right now, and I have the opportunity to see inside of his home office, and I can tell you it looks it looks like he could run practice right out in his front yard because he's got everything set up. You know, he had everything set up like he was in the Star working on everything that they needed to

do well. You've actually been closer to him part of this offseason because he's still been back in Green Bay doing some virtual work with the offseason program. Rob really appreciate the time. Thanks for joining us today. All Right, have a great year, guys. It's Rob Demoski of ESPN covering the Packers. You can check out his work on ESPN dot com. Thanks for joining us, guys,