Cowboys HC Mike McCarthy away from team with back injury

The Dallas Cowboys announced Saturday that head coach Mike McCarthy is away from the team’s headquarters due to a back injury, which he had a procedure for earlier this week.

McCarthy’s absence prevents him from being in-person for the Cowboys’ rookie minicamp, but the head coach isn’t expected to have a “long absence,” ESPN reported. With that said, McCarthy has been able to communicate with the coaching staff and players virtually through Zoom.

Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said that McCarthy has still been able to effectively communicate remotely.

“It’s easy because Mike is always so clear and, ‘hey, this is what we’re going to do,’ so we had a real vision for what we wanted to get accomplished this weekend with these guys,” Quinn said. “It’s mainly just taking those first steps and I think Mike would agree, let’s not miss one step of their development and see what we have and how we communicate and testing them and seeing where we are at. And then we’ll begin with Mike and everybody else here this week of merging everybody together.

“So if there was a time to miss for him, there’s never a time he would feel comfortable, but we all know we got his back, and we’ll get him back soon.”

Dallas is coming off a 12-5 season, which saw it reach the NFC divisional round before losing to the San Francisco 49ers.

Across McCarthy’s three seasons as head coach, the Cowboys are 30-20 in the regular season and 1-2 in the playoffs. He was previously the head coach of the Green Bay Packers for 13 seasons (2006-18), winning Super Bowl XLV.

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