Dallas Cowboys handicapped themselves on coaching candidates, especially on Lions and Chiefs

The Dallas Cowboys’ delay on their McCarthy decision has significantly hampered their ability to interview certain candidates.

The Dallas Cowboys parted ways with Mike McCarthy on Monday morning. That this was the second Monday of the offseason made matters more interesting given that a week before would have made more sense.

Dallas spent the first week of the offseason thinking and believing they would-resign McCarthy. In that time, the Chicago Bears formally requested to interview him and the Cowboys denied that which only reinforced the notion of a McCarthy return.

Maybe the Cowboys had every intention of bringing McCarthy back and things did in fact just fall apart in the end. Every report from an insider has insisted that this was about the length of a potential contract, something that will seemingly be an issue for any head coach who comes in.

But that last point is the most important as that is what matters most now. The Cowboys are officially looking for the 10th coach that the franchise has ever known and the way they went about this McCarthy situation seriously handicapped their ability to find him.

The Cowboys made finding a new head coach harder on themselves

As noted, we are now into the second week of the offseason which means that the first round of playoff games are in the books except for the Monday night game.

This is significant for the Cowboys now because it means that the staffers on the teams with the first-round byes, the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs, are no longer able to be virtually interviewed for potential head coaching opportunities. Last week Ben Johnson, Aaron Glenn, Matt Nagy and Steve Spagnuolo had virtual interviews with the teams who were looking for new head coaches and that window of opportunity is closed.

It took some digging to find the full-on clarity on what comes next, shout out to the one and only Dave Halprin, but NFL rules state that now the Lions and Chiefs staffers cannot be interviewed until at least January 27th (after the conference championship games) and that that window closes February 2nd in order for them to (if they are in it) prepare for the Super Bowl. Obviously if a team is eliminated before then their staffers are fair game.

But there is a catch. Lions or Chiefs staffers may interview again in that window with teams who they conducted virtual interviews within the window that just closed. Given that the Cowboys did not interview any of them during the time in question because they were figuring things out with Mike McCarthy, they have to wait until after the Super Bowl to talk to any Lions or Chiefs staffers, if either team makes it there.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter went on a bit of a rant about this on SportsCenter on Monday afternoon. He noted that this challenge, among others, was completely self-induced by the Cowboys:

“Take a look at the timing of what Dallas did here. Because now there is a window to be able to talk to Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy, Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo…”

“If you wanted to talk to any of those four coaches the time to do it was last week. Now, the Cowboys cannot even speak to them, until after their season ends. If either one of those teams were to advance to the Super Bowl, the soonest the Cowboys could talk to any of them would be February 10th.”

“So essentially they limit themselves there, Mike Vrabel gets the job in New England, Bill Belichick’s in North Carolina… so there are any number of coaching candidates that by the timing of the Dallas decision, the Cowboys could not consider or could not speak with.”

“…the Dallas Cowboys, with their timing, essentially put themselves at something of a disadvantage and now they’re playing catch-up with the rest of the teams that have openings.”

Among the notes about Detroit and Kansas City that Schefter offered he also touched on Mike Vrabel and Bill Belichick.

The former is now the head coach of the New England Patriots. Consider that the Patriots fired Jerod Mayo, conducted their own coaching search (that is a bit of a loose thing to describe what they did, but they did literally perform one) and settled on Mike Vrabel and hired him. His introductory press conference began just after news of Dallas and McCarthy parting ways was announced.

Schefter also mentioned Bill Belichick who a while ago now became the head coach at the University of North Carolina. For what it is worth, Jordan Schultz reported that Belichick would have been interested in the Cowboys job and that it is believed Dallas would have been interested in him. Clearly that is not happening, unless Dallas were to buy out his current deal and he were to pull an all-time about face. It is obviously unlikely.

Belichick, as you are aware, was available at this time last year when that cycle of head coach searching was going on across the NFL. That was also when Dan Quinn was hired by the Washington Commanders and Jim Harbaugh was hired by the Los Angeles Chargers. This isn’t to say that either was some mistake that Dallas made by not securing one of them, but more of a representation at how the franchise dragging their feet over the last week and last year in general has set up their next era on a wrong foot start already.

It is difficult to understand what the Cowboys are thinking or how they could have some sort of plan. But if they do want to talk to anyone on the Lions or Chiefs, at least they now have to wait about a month just to do that – talk.

That is a whole month of offseason prep work that the potential next head coach would miss out on. Obviously that can be overcome, but it again is representative of how they are making this whole thing a lot harder than it already is.

For what it’s worth, it was recently reported that Dallas did some head coach work “behind the scenes”, but that could mean a number of things.

Stay tuned.