McCarthy is currently the favorite<\/a> to be the first head coach fired at BetOnline.ag with 3-1 odds, ahead of Carolina\u2019s Matt Rhule (4-1) and Arizona\u2019s Kliff Kingsbury (5-1), whose teams also lost on opening weekend. Ware could see McCarthy\u2019s term at the Cowboys\u2019 helm ending prematurely with a losing record for the season, but cites reasons now is not the time to pull the plug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIf the Cowboys lose eight games, they will get rid of McCarthy,\u201d he says, adding that \u201cthere are too many `ifs\u2019 right now to make such a move. The status on the O-Line, Dak\u2019s return, etc. You have to keep something solid. You don\u2019t want to rattle anything else in the system right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ware, a finalist for the Hall of Fame in this, his first year of eligibility, was the dynamic force on the Dallas defense from 2005-2013 before spending the last three years of his NFL career with Denver. He won a Super Bowl ring with the Broncos. He was a four-time All-Pro, made nine Pro Bowls, and had 138\u00bd career sacks to rank ninth all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So he knows defense. And he likes what he sees with the Cowboys, who are led by do-everything linebacker Micah Parsons, the 2021 Defensive Rookie of the Year, and All-Pro cornerback Trevon Diggs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes, they are a top-five caliber defense because of the talent they have,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, they can\u2019t remain that way if the offense can\u2019t score points and the defense ends up being on the field for the majority of the game. If they can\u2019t get breaks that they need between series, they cannot remain a top-five defensive unit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which likely would doom Dallas\u2019 season as much as Dak\u2019s injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barry Wilner was a sports writer for the Associated Press for 46 years, covering the NFL since 1985 and serving as the news organization’s Senior NFL Writer since 2001. He\u2019s attended every Super Bowl since 1987. Wilner now joins the BetOnline editorial staff to deliver expert analyses and picks every week of the NFL season.<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DeMarcus Ware spent 12 seasons wrecking NFL offenses. He now sees a wreck in the making in Dallas, where he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":23513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23514,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23512\/revisions\/23514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}