clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

You absolutely have to hear this story about Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy

Mike McCarthy is a special person.

Dallas Cowboys Introduce Head Coach Mike McCarthy Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

The NFL world has descended upon Miami, Florida this week in preparation of Super Bowl LIV, and we have some SB Nation representation on Radio Row. We’ve been gathering interviews throughout the week and finding out everything that we can as it relates to the league as a whole.

Wednesday morning we spoke to FOX’s Jay Glazer. You’ll remember that Glazer broke both the news that Jason Garrett would not return to the Cowboys and that Mike McCarthy would be taking his job.

Listen to Jay Glazer talk to SB Nation at Radio Row

Glazer spoke about the Cowboys hiring process and noted that the team actually initially wanted to hire a defensive coach.

“Originally the Cowboys owners wanted a defensive coach because they wanted to keep the offensive staff. I’m like, don’t do that guys. And I talk to the Joneses about it. I said don’t do that. You get yourself in trouble that way. Get a leader of men. Get a guy who’s going to formulate the attitude of your team. This is who you want.”

It’s possible that there was potential legitimacy to the idea of Mike Zimmer being the guy the Cowboys wanted as that was something that was being talked about quite a bit about a month ago. Glazer also noted that the Cowboys wanted someone with experience so looking for both that and a defensive background would in fact net Mike Zimmer as a potential option.

Obviously the Cowboys job ultimately went to Mike McCarthy and Jay Glazer spoke very glowingly of him. He told a story about McCarthy that is very much worth knowing.

“Mike is about as real a guy as you get. I have this foundation. My MVP charity, merging vets and players. We take former combat vets and we merge them together with former NFL players. Kind of help them through the transition. Mike McCarthy is our second-biggest donor. He met a Navy Seal Operative, a Commander, who we talked out of committing suicide. We coached him out of, I should say. That’s what we do. We coach each other up. And why we need you here and why you’ve got to be proud of your scars. And why you need to look at your time and your teams and just cause your uniform comes off doesn’t mean you’re great in sleeves. And we need you here. And he was around this one guy with me and Mike turned around, on the spot, and wrote a check for $100,000 saying ‘I want to open up in Chicago. I’ll pay. Boom.’ So he’s a good man.”

You always want the people associated with and leading the Cowboys to be people of high character so this is great to see. Dropping that much money in an instant is quite the commitment to a cause.

While we talked about a few other things we couldn’t let Glazer get away without trying to get a potential scoop. We asked him what he thought might ultimately happen with Jason Witten and his answer was interesting.

“So here’s the thing. So Witt needs to understand... If he’s going to get into coaching, he needs to start as a grunt. You’ve got to kind of start... I think he thinks that he knows everything that goes on in the coaching world. He’s got to start literally as almost a quality control guy, work your way up. Cause then he’s going to do himself a disservice if he doesn’t. So he needs to really kind of learn from the very bottom rung and walk up that latter and I think he eventually he can be a head coach, yea.”

We know that the Dallas Cowboys will not have Jason Witten on their staff as a tight ends coach but it remains to be seen if he will do something in a different capacity. It’s worth noting that Miles Austin sort of took the approach that Jay Glazer outlined and that he is in the Super Bowl on the San Francisco 49ers staff.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for the Blogging The Boys Daily Roundup newsletter!

A daily roundup of all your Dallas Cowboys news from Blogging The Boys