Garrett Podell

I'm great, Joe.

Thank you so much for having me on this Friday.

I survived the snowstorm in Dallas this past weekend, and now it's okay to be out and about again.

We got 40-degree weather, the sun's shining, life is good.

That's a great question, Joe.

I think I would give Mike McCarthy's tenure with the Dallas Cowboys over five seasons, give him a B to B plus because when he walked in there after over a decade of Jason Garrett, I mean, this was a team that, uh,

was in and out of the playoffs, not really consistently making it.

2020 was kind of a weird year with the pandemic, and he hired Mike Nolan, who he used to serve under as a coordinator, as a defensive coordinator, and they were one of the worst defenses in football.

But, you know, he cut bait immediately, brought in Dan Quinn in 2021, which also coincided with the first-run draft pick of Michael Parsons.

Boom, three consecutive 12 win seasons.

Dak Prescott was the NFL MVP runner up in 2023.

You could argue statistically maybe should have won that award over Lamar Jackson that year.

And three straight 12 win seasons for the first time in Dallas since their 1990s Super Bowl glory years.

They only won one playoff game in those three trips, which is what a lot of people in Cowboys land wrung their hands about.

And so, obviously, I understand, you know, there's a guy, a friend of mine, Paul, who's a big Steelers fan.

You know, he was kind of unsure about it because of the playoff thing.

But, you know, they're always...

scoring a lot of points.

They were the number one scoring offense across those three years from 2021 to 2023.

And Dak Prescott, when I've spoken to him about McCarthy over the years, is someone who he felt really helped uplift his footwork and just really command and knowledge of the game running McCarthy's West Coast offense.