Zack Martin's reworked contract gives Cowboys no excuses in 2023

It's Super Bowl or bust for the Dallas Cowboys.

On Monday, the team ended its stalemate with guard Zack Martin with the two sides agreeing to a pay raise for the All-Pro guard that will pay him over $36 million over the next two seasons after he was scheduled to make $27.5 million combined in 2023 and 2024.

With his contract taken care of, the Cowboys are short on distractions and big on Super Bowl aspirations. Dallas has few—if any—holes on its roster. Tony Pollard, CeeDee Lamb and Brandin Cooks give the offense three explosive weapons.

The defense is led by Micah Parsons, the odds-on favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year, and also includes defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, linebacker Leighton Vander Esch and defensive backs Stephon Gilmore, Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland.

The biggest question for the Cowboys is the quarterback-head coach duo of Dak Prescott and Mike McCarthy. Prescott's image took a hit last season after he tied for the league lead in interceptions with 15 despite only playing in 12 games and then struggled in the team's divisional-round playoff loss to the 49ers.

But Prescott's good far outweighs his bad. Since earning the starting role in 2016, Prescott's 24,943 passing yards rank seventh among active, rostered NFL quarterbacks. He also ranks in the top 10 in touchdowns, fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives.

McCarthy is the bigger concern.

He's confounded football fans with his poor clock management skills since before he landed in Dallas but has taken his talents to another level as Cowboys head coach. 2021, in particular, was a doozy for him. In Week 2, for example, the team got away with a snafu against the Chargers after he allowed 24 seconds to run off the clock.

With 33 seconds remaining and one timeout, Pollard ran for three yards to set up a third-and-3 at the Chargers' 38-yard line with 28 seconds remaining. Instead of calling a timeout or hurrying to the line to run another play to try to make the attempt more manageable, Dallas did neither. Luckily for McCarthy, kicker Greg Zuerlein bailed him out by hitting a 56-yard field goal for the win.

The entire sequence baffled CBS color commentator and former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. "They had plenty of time to get multiple plays off ... But handing off the ball? If you did that, you need to call the timeout with 30 seconds left."

Afterward, McCarthy explained that he couldn't see the clock because it went "off the board" and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore didn't know how much time was left because his view of a clock was obscured "by a camera guy."

"Once you get below 17 seconds, that's a threshold," McCarthy reasoned at the time.

Unfortunately, he did not remember that lesson during the postseason. The Cowboys hosted the 49ers in the wildcard round and the game infamously ended when McCarthy OK'd a quarterback sneak with no timeouts and 14 seconds remaining. The clock struck zero before Dallas ran another play.

Plenty of the same players who were on the Cowboys during the past two seasons are back for another round. That's not a bad thing considering only the Chiefs have more wins (26) than Dallas (24) since 2021. 

That also means the expectations need to be elevated. Martin's holdout would have been an easy excuse to use if the team underperforms in 2023. The team doesn't have one anymore. If McCarthy doesn't deliver a Super Bowl this season, he shouldn't get another chance.