Dallas Coach Mike McCarthy Speaks on Retaining Job, Cowboys Future

Transcript

00:00 It was originally billed to me as a job interview.

00:06 I don't think it quite worked out that way.

00:08 I'm Mike Fisher. We are at the Star in Frisco.

00:10 Just got done meeting with Mike McCarthy, who is staying, of course, as you know by now,

00:14 as the Dallas Cowboys head coach, as a lame duck, in 2024.

00:18 What we were told at the beginning of the week is that the meeting that McCarthy would have

00:22 following the debacle against Green Bay to end the Cowboys' very short playoff run

00:28 for the third straight year would be a job interview of sorts.

00:32 That suggests, of course, that there might be other candidates.

00:36 You can't have a job interview and only have one candidate.

00:39 That's not really a job interview. It's not really a tryout.

00:42 Well, the ruse that was perpetrated on Cowboy Nation from some of the national media,

00:47 "Oh, they got Belichick over here. Oh, what about Harbaugh over there?"

00:51 No. And we tried to talk about this over the course of the last couple of months.

00:56 This kind of stuff was created. It was Belichickium.

01:00 The idea of the Cowboys being interested in Belichick was created by Belichick cronies.

01:05 And now we know that the Cowboys never really made any overtures in that direction.

01:11 And so I did get a chance to ask Mike McCarthy, "Did you enter that meeting with any trepidation?"

01:16 It turned out to be a three-hour meeting with Jerry Jones.

01:19 And he said, "I was just so in the moment."

01:23 And I'm going to take that as a no. I'm going to take that as well as Mike McCarthy now knows Jerry

01:29 and the Jones family and understands where he stands that, especially after last year,

01:34 when people thought he was twisting in the wind and Jerry afterwards said, "No, never twisting in the wind."

01:39 If he wasn't twisting in the wind last year, even though there was Sean Payton rumors,

01:44 I don't believe he was really twisting in the wind that much this year,

01:48 even though there was bogus Bill Belichick rumors.

01:51 Does that mean that the Cowboys aren't serious about winning? It doesn't mean that.

01:55 It means they have a comfort level with this coach and that they believe that they have built a program

02:00 that can win in a big way.

02:02 Mike McCarthy saying, "We have a championship program. It's just not a world championship program yet."

02:07 But giving a message to Cowboys Nation, "Buy into us."

02:13 And now you have to make a decision whether you want to listen to him.

02:17 At the Star in Frisco with the Cowboys. Fish out.