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Mailbag: What type of head coach is needed?

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(Editor's Note: Time to check the mail! The DallasCowboys.com staff writers answer your questions here in 'Mailbag' presented by Miller Lite.)

I'm surprised by the news that Mike McCarthy won't be returning, but now that the move has been made, what type of head coach would you like to see hired? Offensive minded? Defensive? Hard-nosed disciplinarian? Walk-around? And are there any internal candidates you would like to see get a shot? – Brian Johnson/Dallas, TX

Nick: Lot of different ways to go here. When you look at the coaches that are still alive here in the playoffs, you see about 7-8 different types of coaches. So that being said, I don't think there is one style that works. But I'll say this, the offense has to be addressed in a major way. If that means you need to hire an offensive head coach, or just a talented offensive coordinator that calls the plays, but they've spent too much money on Dak and CeeDee not to have top-notch coaches on that side of the all.

But I don't think you have to have the Dan Campbell types. I think people forget that he's a good coach in the way he motivates his players and coaches. He's not just full of intensity with nothing else.

Again, when I look at the candidates from Deion Sanders, which is being reported already, to Kellen Moore, Ben Johnson or the Pete Carroll and Ron Rivera types, they're all different. All I'll say is the offense needs to work around Dak and CeeDee and the defense needs to put Micah Parsons in the right spots. If you can do that on both sides of the ball, that's a great start.

Patrik: This is a question that seems easy enough to answer, but really isn't. On one note, I could say the team would benefit from a hard-nosed, old-school ball coach like Dan Campbell or, more historically, Bill Parcells or Jimmy Johnson. But those types of coaches don't always work out for their respective teams. On the other hand, I could say they need a young, innovative and adaptive coach that both knows how to relate more easily to players' mindsets and is often ahead of the curve with creativity in their scheme. In a perfect world, you could take the best of both worlds and mesh them into one human, but that's so rare it's not worth considering for 2025.

So if I had to choose between the two styles, I'm more inclined to go with Option B — having now seen Parcells and McCarthy, two legendary head coaches with an old school approach — fail to deliver a sixth ring to the Cowboys. So maybe, just maybe, it's time to find yourself a Kyle Shahanan, Sean McVay or the like, to become less predictable at the expense of assuming just because a coach is "big and bad" that he's perfect for the job. Been there, done that, got the postcards from the 2000s and 2020s to prove it.

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