For just a matter of hours during the Cowboys’ recent search for a new head coach, reports were that owner Jerry Jones made an intriguing phone call to one of three men to have won both a college national championship and a Super Bowl.

Yes, Jones spoke to Pete Carroll about the team’s open position. But it turns out the owner wasn’t gauging the 73-year-old’s own interest in the job; rather, he was following up on a reference for the man he went on to officially hire the very next day.

Carroll, who has amassed 170 regular-season wins with the Jets, Patriots, and Seahawks over 18 NFL seasons and won Super Bowl 48, reportedly gave the Cowboys front office a glowing recommendation of Brian Schottenheimer, who worked under Carroll for three seasons in Seattle and is now the 10th head coach in Cowboys franchise history.

“I just told them all the positive stuff about Brian,” Carroll told the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis.

“He is ready. He’s been waiting for this opportunity for a number of years. He’s been ready for some time.”

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Though Schottenheimer had already been on staff in Dallas since 2022, the 51-year-old had never held a head coaching position at any level.

But he certainly did plenty of encouraging things while with Carroll and the Seahawks. The team led the league in rushing in 2018, Schottenheimer’s first season as offensive coordinator, and quarterback Russell Wilson finished with a career-high passer rating of 110.9. And in 2020, the ‘Hawks scored a franchise-best 459 points before a disappointing wild-card loss in the playoffs and Schottenheimer’s ouster over calls that his offense had lacked creativity late in the season.

Those experiences- and the growth opportunities that came with them- led Carroll to see Schottenheimer even then as a head coach in the making… and a good fit for the Cowboys now. And that’s a big part of what he says he relayed to Jones.

“The stuff we’ve been through together, the confidence I have in him, and to try to reassure him [Jones],” Carroll explained, “because it sounded like he was really in the lead position to get that job. I was trying to help Jerry feel good about it, too, because he was starting to get ready for it. I was glad I had a chance to help.”

Schottenheimer will square off against his former boss and Carroll’s new team when the Cowboys travel to play the Las Vegas Raiders during the 2025 regular season.