The Cowboys reportedly held an interest in Mike Vrabel.
As of the time of this writing the Dallas Cowboys remain on the hunt for their next head coach. Assuming they don’t have one by Friday at close of business, they will have gone two weeks into the process.
It took the Cowboys an entire week to figure out that they were going to need a head coach, though. Dallas infamously took the first week of their offseason to figure things out with Mike McCarthy and ultimately came to the conclusion that the two needed to part ways on the eighth day of their offseason.
Waiting so long cost the Cowboys in several ways. They were unable to request a virtual interview with staffers from the teams who held the top seeds in each conference and ultimately Detroit Lions coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn got head coaching jobs (with the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, respectively) without Dallas ever getting a formal interview.
But waiting also cost the Cowboys with another candidate. Just an hour or two after they made their McCarthy decision the New England Patriots held a press conference to introduce Mike Vrabel as their new head coach. They interviewed him and others and decided on Vrabel and landed him all in the time that Dallas figured out the McCarthy situation.
We can argue that New England always had the inside track on Vrabel due to his history with the organization, but according to The Athletic’s Dianna Russini, Robert Kraft sensed that Jerry Jones and the Cowboys would be interested and pounced.
Shout out to Bleacher Report for the transcription:
“The Dallas Cowboys, too,” Russini said on her Scoop City podcast (12:00 mark). “A lot of people don’t know that. Guess who knew that? Robert Kraft knew that. Robert Kraft knew the Jones family had an interest [in Mike Vrabel].”
Having an interest is one thing and may not be the biggest deal in the world. But it underscores how the Cowboys going about the McCarthy decision, and everything subsequently, has been a broken overall process.
Whether or not Mike Vrabel, Ben Johnson or Aaron Glenn were the right choice for Dallas is a matter any of us can debate. Again though, the Cowboys made conscious decisions that directly compromised their ability to even interview any of them.
You simply cannot operate that way if you are trying to win.
