Jerry Jones tries to walk back comments on Mike McCarthy’s Cowboys future

According to Jori Epstein of USA Today Sports, Mike McCarthy has been told he will return to be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys next season. Even though McCarthy was on the hot seat over the Cowboys’ inability to make it past Super Wild Card Weekend, it appears the coach will be given a chance to try again.

Given McCarthy has only been with the team for two years, this was likely expected. But the reason people continued to question McCarthy’s future (especially given the “retirement” of Sean Payton) is that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones refused to say whether or not McCarthy would be back when asked on 105.3 The Fan last week.

Just one week later, Jones called an impromptu interview with the radio station in hopes of clearing the air, but it definitely didn’t help. It just left people confused. It even overshadowed the news of McCarthy continuing with Dallas.

After clearly refusing to confirm so last week, Jones claims that McCarthy’s future was never in doubt. He says McCarthy’s future was never “wishy-washy” and when asked about his comments from last week Jones said, “You didn’t hear that from me.” But we did, Jerry. Jones claims the idea of Mike “twisting in the wind” was never the case and then went on to blast the media for how they interpreted his prior words.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones claims Mike McCarthy’s future was never in question and says his prior comments were used to secure Dan Quinn

If you were so confident in your coach, why wouldn’t you have stated that last week? Jones says his reasoning is that he and McCarthy were essentially colluding behind closed doors as a way to keep defensive coordinator Dan Quinn. What?! It’s hard to believe that McCarthy would want his future questioned on the radio in order to keep a coach.

Jones didn’t just stop at talking to The Fan. He also went to David Moore of the Dallas Morning News. Here’s what he told him:

"“What I wanted to clear up was that this was a competitive situation, in my view. Dan Quinn was really being pursued as a potential head coach. I’ve experienced seeing coaches turn down a head job for our situation, and so I really was trying hard, meeting with Dan Quinn. Mike was very involved in this process, and very involved in trying to give us every chance to keep Dan Quinn. And 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 towards him. And I wanted to keep him for ourselves.”"

At this point, it’s hard to know what to believe. We know that Jones refused to comment on McCarthy’s future last week. We don’t know why he would stir drama about his head coach in order to keep his defensive coordinator. The point is Jones is denying everything he said last week and wanted to come public to say everything is going to be fine and dandy.

Jones even said he feels offensive coordinator Kellen Moore will be back even though he has a second interview with the Miami Dolphins next week. All in all, it seems like coaching may not be the biggest problem in Dallas. It may the owner himself.

Is Jerry Jones sabotaging the 2022 Dallas Cowboys?

Everyone knows that Jerry Jones is vocal, and he has had a lot to say since the playoff loss. But, are his choices (or lack thereof) hurting the Cowboys?