An angry Jerry Jones declines to endorse Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy for 2022
Nearly a week after the Dallas Cowboys were eliminated from the playoffs, team owner Jerry Jones has still not issued a guarantee on whether head coach Mike McCarthy will be back for next season.
“I won’t get in to any conversations that I’ve had with anybody relative to anything to do with staff,” said Jones, who consistently declined to get into any specifics about the coaching staff when asked multiple times.
Jones remains angry and frustrated and over his team’s 23-17 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in their Jan. 16 NFC wild card game. The Cowboys had been a top team in the conference for much of the season and went on to secure the No. 3 seed, and based on their seeding and home-field advantage were expected to dispatch the upstart No. 6 San Francisco 49ers.
“I thought we did a good job of getting to the playoffs,” Jones said on his radio show on 105.3 The Fan Friday morning. ”I can’t get over what we did in the playoffs. We deserved better than it ending up this way.”
The Cowboys won the NFC East with a 12-5 record, but with last week’s elimination the franchise’s absence from the Super Bowl has reached 26 years. And they have just four playoff wins since winning it all after the 1995 season.
Based on the talent and roster, Jones thought that 2021 was going to be different. And he is holding everyone accountable, so he continues to refuse to offer clarity regarding coach Mike McCarthy’s status for next season.
He says he has everyone under contract that he wants under contract, but Jones has also made a point that the status quo shouldn’t be comfortable. “I’ve got a lot to think about regarding these coaches,” he said.
It will all be news to McCarthy, who met with Jones immediately after the game and again on Monday. For his part, on Wednesday he said that he does not see his future as an issue. “We had very positive conversations and, just, the focus is on the evaluation process,” he said.
That evaluation part is where Jones is right now, and Jones seemed to go specifically after McCarthy when he addressed the team’s problems with penalties. The Cowboys led the league in penalties and had 14 in the playoffs loss to the 49ers.
McCarthy said on Wednesday that addressing the penalties would be the team’s biggest focus of the offseason. That response didn’t sit well with Jones.
“One of the pet peeves I have is we got work on this in the offseason. I don’t go for that,” Jones said. “I have been trying to push that. I want those things recognized and addressed after the first game. Or after we played the sixth game. I don’t want to wait until after we are sitting here with no season left to address the things we are doing or not doing ... You got to adjust [to penalties] or you don’t have a job.”
Jones said he is operating on his own timeline, and refused to give additional insights. “If I thought changing out men at any level would improve us I would change it out,” he said.
“The bottom line is,” Jones said. “[I’m] very, very frustrated and upset that we have used up some very talented players over the last few years.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2022 at 12:21 PM.
