Jerry Jones has reportedly reached out to Pete Caroll about the open Cowboys job.
The Dallas Cowboys have been looking for a new head coach for almost two full business weeks and it both feels like they are very close to an answer and like one will never come.
Thursday brought with it a few pieces of notable information. Early in the day it was reported that the team could “cross the finish line” with Brian Schottenheimer by the end of the week, but as the day wore on another report emerged that Dallas had had an informal conversation to this point with someone other than Deion Sanders. That was new information.
It seemed as if the informal candidate in question may have been former special teams coach Rich Bisaccia, and it very well may could have been. But later in the afternoon Nick Harris of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Jerry Jones has had contact with Pete Carroll.
The Star-Telegram has confirmed that Jones has made contact with former Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll regarding the opening. The conversation has been described as informal, although the interest is legitimate enough to be reported, according to another source.
There are no set plans for a formal interview as of Thursday afternoon.
As this coaching cycle has gone on it has seemed as if Carroll, who coached the Seattle Seahawks forever and led them to victory in Super Bowl XLVIII, wanted to get back into the game. Time will tell if that is ultimately the case.
Before we go on getting more excited than we should be, it is worth noting that Carroll has a history with the perceived favorite in Brian Schottenheimer as the latter worked for the former in Seattle. It is possible that the “informal” conversation, to use Harris’ wording, could have been a vetting process for an eventual Schottenheimer hire.
But there have been reports that Dallas is considering Schottenheimer as an offensive coordinator as well, the role that he held for the last two years with the Cowboys, so maybe Dallas wants to reunite the band so to speak. A world where Pete Carroll is setting the culture at head coach, Brian Schottenheimer is finally getting to call plays as the offensive coordinator and Jason Witten (if it really must be done) is learning from it all for the future doesn’t sound like the worst thing ever.
For what it’s worth here is what Mookie Alexander from Field Gulls had to say about the idea when we asked him. He was kind enough to respond very quickly!
If Carroll is hired by the Cowboys I would anticipate Schottenheimer and Mike Solari being retained due to his prior working relationship with them in Seattle. Schottenheimer helped produce Russell Wilson’s best passing seasons as the Seahawks offensive coordinator, and presumably he would regain playcalling duties after not having them under Mike McCarthy. I think Schottenheimer got a bad rap because of the 2018 playoff game against Dallas (not that criticism was unjustified given the decision to repeatedly run into brick walls), plus the late-season collapse of the “Let Russ Cook” season might have been just as much about Wilson than Schottenheimer.
Carroll is still a good coach in that he won’t produce a low-floor team and he’s not inflexible in terms of his defensive schemes or even his run-pass tendencies on offense. Unfortunately, he’s also had way too many bad defenses over his final several seasons in Seattle, including below-average DVOA marks every year from 2019 until 2023. That’s all despite enormous draft capital and cash resources spent. I also believe his 4th down decisions are too conservative for the modern NFL.
One dynamic that I do wonder about is Carroll working with Jerry Jones. Carroll famously had final say over personnel and roster decisions even though John Schneider was the general manager. Perhaps Carroll is better served just being a head coach, because I believe Front Office Pete is a big reason why Head Coach Pete is looking for a job. That said, nothing about Jerry and Stephen Jones would give me confidence in their ability to build a serious Super Bowl contender regardless of who’s the coach.
Mookie notes the connection to Schottenheimer and even to Mike Solari so all of this tracks from a smell test perspective.
We will see.
