From hearing bells to a late hug: The meeting that led to Mike McCarthy-Cowboys union
Mike McCarthy isn’t the first coach Jerry Jones has ever hired.
The Dallas Cowboys’ owner has plowed through seven others since he fired Tom Landry in 1989.
Some were notable, like Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer and Bill Parcells. Others were notable only because of how unnoticeable they were.
Sorry, Dave Campo and Chan Gailey.
Only Parcells had an NFL pedigree better than what McCarthy brings with him from his year of coaching exile following a 13-year run with the Green Bay Packers.
Perhaps only Parcels had the effect on Jones that McCarthy did after a 12-hour meeting Saturday, when he grabbed McCarthy’s forearm and told him he needed to be the next Cowboys coach.
“The bottom line is, I heard bells,” Jones said.
The story that produced that line, in typical Jones fashion, was about a relationship gone bad and a daughter trying to explain to her father why she wanted a divorce from her husband.
She had stopped hearing the bells that make a marriage special.
McCarthy made them ring Saturday. The parties arrived around 1 p.m. and starting shaking hands in agreement around 1 a.m. Sunday. McCarthy signed a five-year contract Monday.
“Jerry is telling a story about the purchase of the Dallas Cowboys, and at the end of the story he leans over to me and he grabs me by the forearm and reaches out to shake my hand and he says, ‘You need to be the coach of the Dallas Cowboys,’” McCarthy said.
“I jumped up and hugged him. I’ll stop right there. We had a hell of time.”
But Jones said that it wasn’t necessarily the interview with McCarthy that convinced the Cowboys to hire him. They had done their due diligence before he even walked through the door.
The Joneses, including sons Stephen and Jerry Jr., have been floating around NFL circles long enough to know the right people in the game. They heard nothing but positive things about McCarthy, including from the man he is replacing.
“One of the biggest things that impressed me was when I told Jason Garrett I was going to be visiting with Mike, before we had the [final] visit with Jason,” Jerry Jones said. “He said, ‘You are not going to meet anybody any more special than Mike. I love his story. I love him. He is great.’”
Jones loves that McCarthy has coached one of the legacy franchises in sports and knows how to handle the pressure and visibility that comes with that. The Cowboys love that McCarthy has won a Super Bowl and made the Packers perennial contenders, and has worked with elite quarterbacks.
They hope Dak Prescott is on the verge of becoming that, and that McCarthy can help him get there.
“When you start this process, the diligence that you get into, you do feel like you know him before he ever walks in the door,” said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys vice president.
“And then to have Mike walk in the door and be even more special than we thought it was going to be, as the hours proceeded ... it just became obvious that he was going to be a great fit for our organization.”
McCarthy declined to say when he was first contacted about his interest in the job. Whenever it was — and clearly it came well before Garrett was officially ousted Sunday — he was interested.
“It’s the Dallas Cowboys,” McCarthy said. “You don’t have to go any further than that.”
He wanted to be an NFL coach again after the Packers (4-7-1) sent him packing before the end of the 2018 season. McCarthy dedicated himself to becoming a better, more versatile coach, something that has been documented by NFL Network.
He reportedly told Jones he had watched every play of every NFL game this season.
“I need to confess,” McCarthy said. “I told Jerry I watched every play of the 2019 season, but I wanted a job. I haven’t watched every play. You do what you have to do, right?”
It wasn’t necessarily the 12-hour, Saturday-into-Sunday session that convinced the Cowboys that McCarthy was their guy, the elder Jones said. But the meeting didn’t hurt either.
“Jerry [Jr.] came up to me while we were in the middle of the night ... and Jerry reached over and he said, ‘What are you waiting on?’” he said. “I’ll never forget the other night. It’s just one of those experiences you have on the way there.”
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 5:46 PM with the headline "From hearing bells to a late hug: The meeting that led to Mike McCarthy-Cowboys union."
