DALLAS (105.3 The Fan) - The speculation regarding Mike McCarthy's future as the Cowboys head coach persisted after his team's first-round playoff exit thanks to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' refusal to fully commit to him not once, but twice, and grew even louder after Saints coach Sean Payton walked away from his job this week. But those rumors can finally be silenced... for now.
Jones made a surprise visit Friday morning on 105.3 The Fan when he called to discuss McCarthy, Dan Quinn and Kellen Moore's futures with the team.
In the interview, Jones said he never considered firing McCarthy and that his decision to be "coy" about his future was designed to help keep Quinn from taking a head coaching job elsewhere.
"What I wanted to clear up was that this was a competitive situation. Dan Quinn was really being pursued as a potential head coach. And I've had two other occasions in my career when a coordinator was offered a head coaching job, and I got them not to accept it. … And so, I've experienced seeing coaches turn down a head job for our situation. … This is what I want to clear up, Mike was very involved in this process, and very involved in trying to give us every chance to keep Dan Quinn. There's no question it was a competitive situation and I couldn't really get out and speak to it publicly because I didn't want to push teams toward him, and I wanted to keep him for ourselves. … The idea that Mike (was) twisting in the wind wasn't the case at all. We were sitting there trying to keep Dan Quinn and trying to maintain continuity on our coaching staff.
"You had it twisted, not you, but our media did. And I didn't want to get involved publicly because we were in a highly competitive situation. I didn't want to make it look like so that he'd be much more interesting to another club. I was fighting to keep him to be our coordinator not be a head coach."
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Jones was asked about his decision to not be fully transparent about McCarthy's future during his visit with 105.3 The Fan last week and if that led to the questions about his head coach's job status?
"Those have been my public sentiments. And the sentiment was frustration. The sentiment was (that I was) just so disappointed that we're not playing. But we did some good things last year, and we can build on that, and we can. And what I said on the show, and I've seen it written several times, that I got everybody under contract that I want under contract," Jones said. "It was never an issue with me about Mike being the head coach, you never heard that from me. You've taken the fact that I was sitting there being coy, that I was somehow (being) wishy-washy. Nuh-uh. Just because you're frustrated doesn't mean someone necessarily is going to lose their job."
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