Report: Dallas Cowboys were caught off guard by Mike McCarthy leaving
The Dallas Cowboys apparently did not plan for Mike McCarthy leaving and to be searching for a new head coach.
We are not even a full week into the Dallas Cowboys coaching search and it already feels like it has gone on for a thousand years. Buckle up because it will probably last a minute.
The thing about this whole search is that the Cowboys themselves may not have been entirely ready for it. Perhaps that does not sound shocking to you given recent events, but if reports are to be believed, this was not work that the team expected to be doing right now.
The Athletic’s Dianna Russini was discussing the idea of Deion Sanders becoming the next coach of the Cowboys on the latest episode of Scoop City, and in noting that people she has spoken to around the league aren’t quite buying it, she mentioned that such is the case because the Cowboys were always planning on Mike McCarthy returning.
“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.”
“The plan was to bring him back. They did not have a plan in place here.”
“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.”
The idea that the Sanders thing is hollow is one that many people thought when it was first reported. Many opinions were that this was all for attention, but Deion’s recent successes at Colorado certainly merit a level of interest, especially given how his spirit of determination seems to be what fuels his success anywhere he goes with anything he does.
But it does sound believable that Dallas was not quite prepared for a McCarthy-less world and to be conducting a coaching search this week. We have discussed many times how unorthodox their approach to McCarthy was during the first week of the offseason. It stands to reason that they thought they could get into a discussion with him and hash things out. Maybe they did and really required Jason Witten to be an heir apparent on his staff and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, or maybe there was a dissolution for any one of a million other possible reasons.
Perhaps McCarthy just got fed up after going through the entire 2024 calendar year in the final year of his contract and all of the chaos that (predictably) came with that, not to mention the chaos that came by the franchise dragging out deals for two of his best players in CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott. Obviously all of that even impacted the former being at training camp which was a clear factor in the struggles early on in the season.
Another NFL insider in Adam Schefter touched on some of this overall idea on the latest episode of Pardon My Take and specifically addressed how Dallas denied the Chicago Bears’ request to interview Mike McCarthy during the week of purgatory that they trapped us all in (McCarthy has since interviewed with Chicago, for the record). His answer for it all literally was that this is just the Dallas Cowboys’ way, unbelievably.
“When they said no... you didn’t know whether that meant they were going to try to get something done... or whether they were just kind of... being Dallas.”
Maybe McCarthy got tired of Dallas being Dallas, so to speak, and perhaps that was why he left the team and put them in this spot. Whatever ultimately happened the Cowboys are now conducting a coaching search.
Schefter touched on the search at large as well during his appearance on PMT and reiterated what is starting to be said everywhere, that Kellen Moore is the logical choice (in his view, and if you read between the lines, the team’s).
“Kellen Moore... square in contention. Deion Sanders... if that’s the way Jerry wants to go... square in contention. Could we get a guy like Leslie Frazier or Jason Witten? Yes. I think it’s possible. But I think that Kellen Moore is the logical name. And Deion Sanders is the really fun, intriguing name.”
Who is “enjoying” all of this?
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