Getty Cowboys HC Mike McCarthy
It likely dawned on Mike McCarthy — again — that he was now the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys upon glancing over the 2020 schedule, linchpinned by six nationally-televised games.
He’s not in Wisconsin anymore. This is America’s Team, and America’s Team gets the eyeballs.
But McCarthy’s eyeballs weren’t glazing at the sight of continual primetime action. Instead, he merely focused on, and was delighted by, the fortuitous setup of the regular-season docket.
“I really like the way the schedule lays out,” McCarthy said Thursday evening on NFL Network, per The Athletic. “It’s kind of nice not to have a division game until we can get started and find out where we are as a football team.”
With the coronavirus pandemic in mind, allowing for abrupt flexibility if need be, the NFL purposely crafted non-divisional and interconference matchups to open the season. The Cowboys won’t face an NFC East foe until Week 5, when the New York Giants come to town.
Dallas will begin its campaign against the Los Angeles Rams, preceding contests against the Atlanta Falcons, Seattle Seahawks, and Cleveland Browns — Sunday Night Football and two late-afternoon kickoffs for the boys in blue.
All by design.
“The thing we look at first are the Sun. (4:25) games. (Those are) the No. 1 show in all of TV. We treat those windows with a lot of seriousness. (This year) each of those games have either a future Hall of Fame QB or…the Dallas Cowboys,” FOX executive Michael Mulvihill said on The Herd, per The Athletic.
There, too, is some validity to McCarthy’s point that pushing back games which count the most — divisional games — could work to the Cowboys’ advantage. This is a team that overhauled both its coaching staff and on-field personnel; with so many fresh faces, it may take a few weeks before they find their collective footing.
But it may not, either.
The Cowboys, installed as 2.5-point favorites over the Rams, are projected to finish 11-5 in 2020, according to online sportsbook BetOnline.ag. McCarthy’s squad will benefit from facing the league’s third-easiest strength of schedule (.459), a year after tackling the 14th-hardest schedule en route to an 8-8 record.
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Preseason Schedule Unveiled
The Cowboys, it was also announced Thursday, will kick off the 2020 preseason against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the annual Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio. The matchup is scheduled to take place Thursday, Aug. 6 at 8 p.m. ET.
What you didn’t know was that Dallas would travel to Los Angeles to face the Chargers at the brand-new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, site of the Cowboys’ regular-season opener against the Los Angeles Rams.
In preseason Week 2, the Cowboys will make their 2020 home debut by welcoming the Baltimore Ravens to The Star. They’ll stay put the following week to host the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the regular-season dress rehearsal — a.k.a. the closest simulation to “real” football when starters play the entire first half and possibly into the third quarter.
Finally, to close the preseason, the Cowboys will hit the road to meet the Texans in Houston. This, a sharp contrast from the previous game, is lovingly referred to as the Backup Bowl, where first-stringers idle away on the sidelines, never sniffing the field.
Below is the Cowboys’ exhibition schedule:
Hall of Game Game: Cowboys vs. Steelers; Thursday, Aug. 6, 8 p.m. ET
Week 1: Cowboys at Chargers; Aug. 13-17
Week 2: Cowboys vs. Ravens; Aug. 20-24
Week 3: Cowboys vs. Chiefs; Aug. 27-30
Week 4: Cowboys at Texans; Sept. 3-4
Dates and times for games occurring from Weeks 1-4 will be finalized in the days ahead.
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Follow Zack Kelberman on Twitter: @KelbermanNFL