On Jan. 17, 2006, the Dallas Cowboys and team owner Jerry Jones lost.
They didn’t lose a playoff game; their Bill Parcells-coached team had won just nine games that season and failed to advance to the playoffs.
Instead, the Dallas Cowboys lost their assistant head coach and passing game coordinator when the New Orleans Saints reached a deal to hire Sean Payton as head coach.
At the moment, Dallas still had a Hall of Fame head coach in Parcells in the building. Letting a masterful offensive mind out the door was disappointing but not devastating. But as the years elapsed, and Payton developed the Saints into one of the winningest teams in football and a Super Bowl champion, Jones never forgot the one that got away.
Keep that in mind when assessing the Cowboys’ search for their next head coach.
After Payton got away, Jones was eager not to lose Jason Garrett. Garrett began his decade-long tenure as head coach the same year Payton led the Saints to a Super Bowl.
More recently, the Cowboys front office worried when head-coaching interest spiked for their then-defensive coordinator Dan Quinn. They celebrated two years ago when Quinn stayed rather than take the Denver Broncos head job. They held their breaths last year when talks intensified with the Washington Commanders, where he ultimately went.
The move arguably backfired, Quinn leading an overachieving Commanders team to a wildcard win last Sunday less than 24 hours before the Cowboys and Mike McCarthy ended their five-year partnership. And Quinn wasn’t the only recent Cowboys coordinator advancing to the divisional round.
As Jones considers the market for a position in which he values familiarity and experience, expect Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore to be a top candidate.
Moore rose in Dallas from backup quarterback to quarterbacks coach to four-year offensive coordinator before he left in 2023 for McCarthy to take over play-calling. Thursday, the Cowboys requested to interview Moore, multiple sources with knowledge of the request confirmed to Yahoo Sports.
Jerry Jones let Sean Payton get away. As the Cowboys begin the search for their next head coach, he might not want to have the same thing happen with Kellen Moore. (Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports)
Jones will value the chance to recapture Moore’s Dallas success rather than risk him succeeding elsewhere as Payton and Quinn have. He will not be their only candidate and is not available for an in-person interview right now as the Eagles prepare to host the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round. But there is mutual interest in exploring a return, sources say.
“I spent a lot of time there, eight years,” Moore told reporters Tuesday. “Have plenty of relationships in that place. [But] I love it here. I’ve had so much fun here. It’s been a really fun process, and we’re in a really special situation right now getting the chance to…make a run at this thing. That’s really all you worry about.
“Everything else is what it is, and we’ll see where it takes you.”
What Kellen Moore would offer Cowboys as head coach
As Moore coordinated Dallas’ offense from 2019-22, he began turning heads across the league.
During three of his four seasons as offensive coordinator, the Cowboys ranked top-six in scoring. Twice they led the league in yardage, including in 2021 when no team had more points or yards than Dallas.
Dallas failed to advance past the divisional round of the playoffs but Moore routinely helped them produce in the regular season.
Even after they split, he was desired enough to receive the Los Angeles Chargers offensive coordinator role in 2023 and the Eagles’ role this year when Jim Harbaugh brought his own staff to Los Angeles.
At least nine teams spanning six of the league’s eight divisions have sought interviews with Moore since he ascended to the coordinator level, per those team’s social media posts at the time and more recent reports.
The perception he left in interviews?
“Super impressive,” one executive who interviewed Moore for a previous opening told Yahoo Sports. “We all left saying he’s going to be a head coach some day. Unbelievably smart and was just very organized with his thoughts.”
Moore’s resumé has continued to trend toward promotion, his experience growing as he approaches his 36th birthday. Schematically, the son of a longtime high school coach, who was creating playbooks as a child, strikes people as ready to navigate the head coach role’s balance of game management and play-calling responsibilities.
Interpersonally, the executive who interviewed Moore praised how easy he was to talk to and how he made a point to stay in touch with team brass after their initial meetings. Moore is approachable and has received praise from players for his receptiveness to their ideas and creative wrinkles.
Jerry Jones on Cowboys OC Kellen Moore’s creativity:
“I’m not paying money for an experienced coach. What I’m paying for is the stuff you get when you get youth. … Imagination, enthusiasm, can-do, taking some risks. We need that since we sacrificed a little experience.” pic.twitter.com/s96c9adc7x
— Jori Epstein (@JoriEpstein) August 30, 2019
The top question he’ll face is whether his personality, which is not loud or brash, would command the room as is the expectation for a head coach. When asked about how close to the vest Moore’s public persona was, Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott once smiled and said he loved that Moore didn’t show reporters the chops that endeared him to players.
But would that approach work as seamlessly if he’s de facto spokesperson of the team? Changes may need to take place, though Jones’ penchant for being the Cowboys’ top spokesperson may temper that need.
Coordinator hires would matter, some around the league pointing to the Minnesota Vikings coaching arrangement where defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ fiery coaching style offers an intensity less forceful in head coach Kevin O’Connell. The Cleveland Browns similarly paired an intense defensive coordinator in Jim Schwartz with a more cerebral head coach in Kevin Stefanski.
The executive who interviewed Moore believed that while extroversion and strength of presence help check the “leader of men” box teams seek, they’re not the only route to motivation.
“Presence doesn’t have to be huge, [as long as he’s] able to get a team motivated to play, or ready to play in the big games,” the executive said. “Just being able to give the correct message — which is more emotional intelligence than presence, and he has that.”
Possible candidates for Cowboys’ coaching staff
By no means is Moore to the Cowboys a done deal. The team has yet to even interview its longtime employee and in-person interview scheduling will hinge on how deep the Eagles advance in the playoffs.
Dallas is scheduled sooner to interview former New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh, a person with knowledge confirmed to Yahoo Sports. If the Cowboys prefer Moore to Saleh as head coach, they would be wise to recruit Saleh as a defensive coordinator who could offer Moore the insight of a former head coach as well as the intensity Minnesota and Cleveland secured in their defensive coordinators. If Saleh doesn’t land a head job this cycle, Dallas offers a talented roster and big stage that could lead him to his second top opportunity as the role did for Quinn.
Longtime Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, who is currently coaching high school football in North Texas, is also of high interest in Jones’ staff vision. Witten’s presence could be part of a plan for complementing Moore’s more cerebral nature.
Other candidates expected to pique the Cowboys’ interest are former Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier, former Los Angeles Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn, former Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Brian Johnson and Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn.
All but Frazier have clear ties to the Cowboys that would encourage Jones.
Lynn coached Cowboys running backs under Parcells; Glenn played for the Cowboys as a cornerback under Parcells; and Johnson coached Prescott in college. All three grew up in Texas around Texas football.
Former Cowboys cornerback Deion Sanders meets Jones’ criteria of head coaching experience and Cowboys familiarity, which contributed to the two having a conversation on Monday after Dallas announced it would not renew McCarthy’s contract. But realistically, the dalliance was more of a brilliant marketing play for Jones to shift the conversation away from his delayed coaching decision and for Sanders to use to gain leverage and clout at the University of Colorado.
Jones’ disinterest in offering McCarthy a standard-length contract due to the likelihood of a buyout responsibility indicates a disinterest in paying buyouts that he would owe Colorado for Sanders or, say, North Carolina, if he chased former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. Jones philosophically does not believe in paying for services he’s not receiving and he values the market price of players more honestly than the market price of coaches.
As rapidly as the headlines will seem to fly, the Cowboys — like most coach-needy teams — could take time to fill their opening given the NFL rules restricting interviews with coaches on NFL playoff teams still competing.
But when they land their hire, expect it to follow the 82-year-old’s more recent interest in experience and familiarity rather than the daring, wild-card reputation Jones earned in the 1990s. Jones wants to envision a head coach’s structure based on how they’ve done it before or how he’s seen the way they could do it.
And he longs for coaches who are destined for success to succeed with him rather than without him.
So as several top coaching candidates remain unavailable to visit Cowboys headquarters, a coach who already lost in the wild-card round may be the most influential in pointing Jones toward his next leader.
Payton has found his latest successful act, bringing rookie quarterback Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos to exceed expectations in the coach’s second year with the franchise.
Jones, no doubt, is taking notes.