Should be a fun two weeks in Dallas!
When you want to support your head football coach, there are lots of ways to do it. And when you have taken answers from reporters every Sunday afternoon for the last 35 years, you probably know each and every one of those ways. There are few things Jerry Jones loves more than working a press conference, and his usual Sunday chats have been a uniquely Dallas experience for almost all of his tenure with the team.
And when it comes to sending messages through said press conference, Jones knows exactly what he's doing. He always knew he was going to get questions about Mike McCarthy's job security after the Cowboys' embarrassing 47-9 home loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, and that his answer was going to be dissected a dozen different ways regardless of how brief it was.
But when asked about his interest in making a change – on multiple occasions – Jones let the opportunity to show real public support pass on by. At the risk of making something out of nothing, Jones' answer certainly didn't sound all that supportive.
Jerry Jones makes it very clear that the Cowboys aren't going to fire Mike McCarthy
Credit where it's due: this is as straight forward an answer as you'll get from Jones. And not only that, but he went from being not ready to discuss changes to knowing he wasn't going to make any in a span of, like, three minutes.
As far as answers goes, this one's pretty cut-and-dry. Maybe it is all just an elaborate act to keep everyone at an arm's distance while they quietly hire Bill Belichick at some point over the next two weeks, but I kinda doubt it. (But maybe!) Also, Jones has stuck beside McCarthy through worse – it's probably well past time everyone believes him when he says that McCarthy's not going anywhere.
But if McCarthy's not going anywhere, this is the most feeble attempt at supporting him that we've seen all season. He shut down the conversation, but only in the most brief and unenthusiastic way possible. Smiles and compliments are hard to come by when you just lost by six scores at home, but it's absolutely not an accident that Jones passed on an opportunity to wholly endorse his head coach. (Whose team is still, technically, one game out of first in the NFC East.)
Now Cowboys fans are just stuck in a weird middle ground where they know that their team doesn't really have a ton of faith in the head coach, but is also not prepared to do anything about it any time soon. Should be a fun two weeks!
