Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, senior NFL reporter Jori Epstein and senior NFL writer Frank Schwab discuss what Jerry Jones and the Cowboys will do next after parting ways with head coach Mike McCarthy. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
Do you, Jerry, believe that in the back of Jerry’s mind, he’s already got somebody that he’s shooting for, or was this really just about yes or no to Mike McCarthy first and foremost?
When Jerry was asked even before he let go of Mike McCarthy, if he was if he had a list, he said, I always, always know coaches and where they’ve been.
Now knowing coaches and having the perfect candidate for your team or the closest thing to perfect are not the same.
I do believe Jerry has people in mind, and I also, when talking to someone close to that organization, I asked about a couple of candidates, and they said, look, there are people in the organization who will want a thorough exhaustive search.
They will want to talk to Ben Johnson even if he lands elsewhere.
They will want to know, hey, Aaron Glenn, Lions defensive coordinator who, by the way, was with the Cowboys for a couple of years, who do you bring as your offensive coordinator as you come?
There are people in the organization who want to go through those stones, turn them over, ask every question, and there’s also a belief, at least among Some people in the caborne’s organization that Jerry doesn’t want to go through that exhaustive search.
So do I think he has a shortlist?
Yes.
Do I think he has called everyone up or that he had done so before Monday morning?
I don’t think so.
I don’t think that he all of a sudden on Monday decided to part ways with Mike because he had his next guy waiting in the, what is it, the rafters, Waiting in the raft, waiting in wings, whatever.
I, I just, this is weird to be.
Two different aspects in that I don’t know that the Cowboys are going to get a better coach than Mike McCarthy, and usually when you move out from a coach, you want to feel like, hey, our next coach is going to be better.
I don’t know that that’s the case.
And I also don’t know Mike McCarthy’s next landing spot is better than the Dallas Cowboys.
So it almost seems weird to me that the best fit for both sides was for Mike McCarthy to come back, and yet Mike McCarthy’s going to go to the Saints, like, OK, like, enjoy.
Which, yeah, by the way, to be clear, I know we focused on the Cowboys part, but I definitely would think the Saints would be interested in Mike McCarthy.
There’s a lot of ramblings there, and not only because he’s coached there before and has a relationship with general manager Mickey Loomis, and also the Bears will be, um, interviewing him later this week.
They put in that request.
I agree with you that in a vacuum you put Mike McCarthy on a piece of paper and you put the Dallas Cowboys on a piece of paper.
They are a better match for each other than any.
The other matches out there.
But I think when you apply the reality of the situation in the last 5 years, sometimes you just got to shake it up.
And Mike McCarthy was not hired to win 12 games a year, even though he did a great job of that, and he did a great job of winning them 3 years in a row as opposed to Jason Garrett’s every other year being good.
Mike McCarthy was hired to take the Cowboys, who had been winning in the regular season and making it to the playoffs a lot of years deep into the postseason, and in 5 years he did not do that.