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There is a sentiment around the NFL that if Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wants something, he usually gets it. And at one point that may well have been true. But reality could not be farther from the truth in recent years, and that point was recently exemplified by former head coach Mike McCarthy.
McCarthy and the Cowboys parted ways after five season earlier this week. Reports suggest that Jones wanted McCarthy to mentor former Cowboys star Jason Witten to become a future head coach. McCarthy seemingly wasn’t a big fan of that idea.
But now it seems that things are even worse than we imagined in Dallas. Not only did McCarthy reject Jones’ offer, he did so after the Cowboys had already planned to have him back in the fold, leaving the organization in a state of disarray.
“There’s definitely a camp that I’m talking to that’s like… this is not real. This is not real. They talked. This is all flirting. This is all… Jerry was not expecting Mike McCarthy and the Cowboys to go separate ways,” Diana Russini of The Athletic reported on the Scoop City show on Friday.
“The plan was to bring him back. They did not have a plan in place here,” she continued. “…So a lot of this was scrambling, from what I can gather, of just… I need to figure out how to fix this. Quickly. And so now we’re seeing the coaches get called in.”
McCarthy reportedly felt like the organization, and Jones specifically, was jerking him around. So by the time Monday rolled around, with just one day left before his current contract expired, McCarthy took his ball and went home.
He’s now considered a top contender for jobs in both Chicago and New Orleans. Neither of those situations are particularly rosy, especially compared to the roster in place in Dallas. But neither has Jerry Jones running the show, and that alone is enough to make a man consider his options.