Many were shocked when Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones elected to keep head coach Mike McCarthy around for another year after the Cowboys floundered in the playoffs.

The prevailing thought was that Jones would fire McCarthy and pivot to Bill Belichick, who had just parted ways with the New England Patriots.

However, Jones ultimately decided to retain McCarthy, and when asked about it at the Senior Bowl this week, the 81-year-old defended his decision.

“This is not a ‘talk yourself into it,’” Jones said at the Senior Bowl, via Nick Harris of the Cowboys’ official team website. “It obviously gives you a lot of things to consider and think about. Everybody has options. This is one I’m very comfortable with. I felt good during the year with the job that Mike was doing. The team was responding well. We were all disappointed that we didn’t win that Green Bay game. We had visions of a lot better than that; we all did. But there are things there that we can take forward.”

McCarthy initially took the reigns in Dallas back in 2020. He went 6-10 in his first season, largely due to an injury to Dak Prescott. Since then, he has logged three straight 12-win campaigns. The problem is the lack of playoff success to go along with it, as the Cowboys have still not made it past the Divisional Round since January 1996.

Jones added that he did not want to keep changing play-callers on Prescott, as firing McCarthy would have resulted in Prescott having to deal with three different play-callers in three years.

“Dak has improved since Mike has been here, and I think we can look forward to that improvement,” Jones said. “There’s more there to get in terms of Dak’s improvement with Mike.”

It’s hard to argue that Prescott has improved under McCarthy, but you have to wonder just how long Mike McCarthy’s leash will be with Jerry Jones in 2024.

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