Getty Images
When Sean Payton stepped down as the head coach of the Saints in January, it didn’t take long for people to begin wondering if he’d wind up replacing Mike McCarthy as the head coach of the Cowboys.
Payton worked for Dallas before getting the Saints job and he was close to returning to the team in 2019, but Payton seems destined for a job in broadcasting rather than coaching this season. The prospect of that changing in the years to come is likely to linger, however, and any rough patches that McCarthy and the Cowboys hit are sure to give rise to thoughts of Payton coming back to the sideline.
At the Scouting Combine on Tuesday, McCarthy told reporters that he and team owner Jerry Jones have spoken about the Payton speculation and that he had no interest in further conversations on the matter.
“It’s a narrative I don’t want to be a part of,” McCarthy said, via the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t think anybody would want to be a part of it on either side of the fence. In fairness to Sean, he’s being asked the questions, but nothing good comes out of that. Our conversations [between McCarthy and Jones], when we talk about the partnership between the head coach and the G.M., those are the conversations him and I have. . . . He addressed it. We laughed about it, and moved on. That’s really where it is.”
McCarthy said that he didn’t see the Payton chatter as “any type of topic or anything that gets in the way of winning.” McCarthy will need to be correct because the topic of replacing him will only become more prevalent if the Cowboys aren’t winning often in 2022.
