Plus details on Mike McCarthy’s role and his epic job interview, great expectations from Cowboys greats, and more Jason Garrett fallout.
Mike McCarthy is getting to work assembling his coaching staff in Dallas, with one positional assistant headed out the door on Thursday and another new candidate appearing in the wings. Cowboys Nation is still dissecting the nearly-hour-long press conference that introduced McCarthy officially. And new details are surfacing about how things ended with Jason Garrett… and how things had been with his players that only hastened that ending.
There’s more opinion on what’s expected of McCarthy and a bit of insight on how he intends to work (or not) with the Joneses in the front office. All that, plus a ludicrous idea from Terrell Owens- because, hey, it’s been a while. Here’s the News and Notes.
Stan Drayton, the Texas Longhorns’ associate head coach and run game coordinator, was scheduled to meet with the Cowboys on Thursday. Drayton coached Ezekiel Elliott at Ohio State before serving as running backs coach with the Chicago Bears from 2015 to 2016.
Gary Brown, the running backs coach in Dallas since 2013, is reportedly still in the mix to return for 2020.
According to Ed Werder, a team source said this week that the Cowboys lacked the following under Jason Garrett: fear, accountability, and discipline.
NFL Network’s Jane Slater, speaking on the air Thursday with 105.3 The Fan, told a story that seemed to confirm the first item on that list.
Slater’s first-hand account of a text exchange in which a player told Garrett “to [expletive] off” and that owner Jerry Jones had given the player free rein to ignore his coach is a sobering and somewhat shocking anecdote. If true, it speaks volumes about how bad things had truly gotten in Dallas.
Despite leading Pro Bowler Amari Cooper to a career-best season and helping turn Michael Gallup into a breakout star, wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal will be let go from the Cowboys staff.
Lal had been with the team for the past two seasons, after serving in the same capacity for the Colts, Bills, Jets, and Raiders over the previous nine years.
To many, Mike McCarthy was a surprise choice for head coaching duties in Dallas. Why? It was widely assumed that the former Packers skipper was also interested in having a hand in player personnel decisions, and Jerry and Stephen Jones would be loathe to give up that kind of control in any amount.
Andrew Brandt, NFL insider and former Packers vice president, shared with NFL Network’s Bobby Belt and Jane Slater on The ‘Boys & Girl Podcast that in searching for a 2020 opportunity, McCarthy was seeking a job to be purely a coach.
The week-long goodbye between Jerry Jones and Jason Garrett was about more than just dismissing an underachieving coach or finalizing exit interviews. For owner Jerry Jones, it was bringing down the curtain on an era. During the introduction of new coach Mike McCarthy, Jones spoke of all the years he has employed members of the Garrett family and said that longstanding relationship was a real factor in how the coach’s release was handled by the team.
“I will tell you that I had a great 30 years around the Garrett family, and it’s wonderful. It’s a good feeling, and it is one of the best parts of my life,” Jones said.
“We all wanted this to have a very nice- if possible, under the circumstances- soft landing.”
In an interview this week with San Francisco radio station 95.7 The Game, former Cowboys wideout Terrell Owens revealed that he thinks his former club is just one missing ingredient away from a Super Bowl title.
“They have a quarterback that’s a free agent in Tom Brady,” Owens said. “That’s the next move.”
By Owens’s logic, the fact that current quarterback Dak Prescott hasn’t been given a new contract extension signals a tangible degree of uncertainty within the Dallas front office.
It was the interview that turned into a sleepover that turned into a job offer neither party could consummate fast enough, to hear social media tell it as it unfolded over the weekend.
Using bits of the story as shared in Mike McCarthy’s introductory press conference, Star Magazine contributor Jonny Auping dives into the epic 12-hour discussion that won Jerry and Stephen Jones over. Find out what caused McCarthy to jump out of his chair and bear-hug his new boss, and what personal remembrance led Jerry to utter the sure-to-be-famous quip about finding his new coach: “The bottom line is… I heard bells.”
In introducing the team’s new head coach, owner Jerry Jones likened the timing of Mike McCarthy’s availability to 1989, when a directionless Dallas club owned the first pick in the NFL Draft and future Hall of Famer Troy Aikman sat atop the war room big board.
Those great expectations are shared by team legend Michael Irvin, who compared McCarthy’s arrival to Steve Kerr taking command of the talented roster of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and swiftly winning a league title.
Aikman had an interesting perspective on the way his friend Jason Garrett’s time with the Cowboys came to an end, as well as how McCarthy was unceremoniously dumped in Green Bay with games still to play in 2018.
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