Never forget that Mike McCarthy lied to Jerry Jones to get Cowboys head coach job

Despite having an unprecedented market of head coach candidates to choose from, the Dallas Cowboys decided to keep Mike McCarthy as head coach.

It'd be one thing to fire McCarthy and have slim pickings as far as replacements, but Dallas bypassed Mike Macdonald, Jim Harbaugh, Bill Belichick and Mike Vrabel, as well as rising offensive-minded stars Ben Johnson and Bob Slowik.

McCarthy's playoff resume isn't deserving of another year on the job, but three straight 12-win regular seasons is nothing to sneeze at. Fans will roll their eyes at that (trust me, so are we), but there's something to be said about the consistency McCarthy has brought to the franchise.

McCarthy enters the final year of his contract, which brings us back to when Jason Garrett entered a lame-duck year. The coaching market wasn't nearly as robust in 2019 as it is now, and Dallas ultimately hired McCarthy.

The Cowboys seemingly were attracted to McCarthy's resume, but lest we forget that the former Super Bowl champ lied to Jerry Jones to get the job.

Never forget that Mike McCarthy lied to Jerry Jones to get Cowboys head coach job

"I need to confess: I told Jerry I watched every play of the 2019 season," McCarthy said during his introductory press conference in 2020. "I wanted the job. You do what you gotta do, right?"

"It was more about tracking the trends and seeing what people were doing. And a big part of it, too, was watching players, watching some of these new offenses, really a couple of guys on defense we were able to study.

This moment didn't inspire confidence in fans whatsoever. McCarthy thought the joke would resonate among the media room, but it didn't. There we some laughs, but it mostly created awkwardness instead of comedic relief.

The concept of exaggerating during a job interview to make yourself look better isn't farfetched. It might even happen in NFL circles. Leave it to the Cowboys, though, for their head coach to confess moments after getting the job, right?

McCarthy gave Jerry Jones exactly what he wanted to hear and Jones bought it. That begs the question of who looks worse: McCarthy for deceiving the owner to get the job or Jones for actually believing McCarthy watched every play from the 2019 Cowboys season.

It's anyone's guess what attracted the Joneses to McCarthy. His Super Bowl title and nine playoff appearances in 13 seasons -- including four NFC Championship Game appearances -- as Packers head coach likely did the job. But you have to wonder what kind of influence McCarthy's "lie" had in the Cowboys final decision.

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