Cowboys Future With Belichick Revealed in Rival NFL Team's Interview?

‘The Dead Horse’? Dallas Cowboys Future With Coach Bill Belichick Revealed in Rival NFL Team's Interview?

FRISCO - We have made a pledge to Cowboys Nation - and to ourselves - regarding Bill Belichick.

Outside of Jerry Jones’ recent remarks revealing his high comfort level with the idea of someday working side-by-side with the legendary coach - remarks that we found to be quite fascinating, rather inappropriate and maybe semi-true - there is no reason to beat this dead horse.

Belichick is 71. He hasn’t supervised a superior team in a half-decade. Even with eight openings in this cycle, nobody hired him.

And only the Atlanta Falcons came close to doing so, an arrangement that sources told FalconsReport.com at SI had everything to do with Belichick’s arguably arrogant desire to be atop the Falcons’ power pyramid.

But now comes Falcons owner Arthur Blank, spinning for us a contrary story. … and one that breathes a bit of life into that dead horse.

Assuming, that is, Mr. Blank’s fresh angle is the truth.

"Bill Belichick never asked for full control over personnel, the building, anything of that nature," Blank recently said. "It was very inclusive, very collaborative. All of these things that were being produced by the media are totally not true."

We are going to suggest that Mr. Blank is performing a delicate semantic dance here. We are standing by our story that Belichick was not enamored of the idea of working under team president Rich McKay and young GM Terry Fontenot.

And indeed, read between Blank’s lines here when he stated, “He met Terry Fontenot, checked out our people doing his own references, sent me a private text, which I eventually shared with Terry that he'd be happy working with him."

Sure. “With him.” Not “for him.”

Our man Jimmy Johnson is offering up a similar take, saying that he's "shocked'' that Belichick didn't get a job, adding, "He's more than willing to give up some of the personnel decisions to the general manager and the personnel people." 

And again, we must add: "Giving up some decisions to the GM''? That's Belichick's idea of working under a GM?

But for the sake of argument - and being respectful to the fact that Mike McCarthy is the sitting head coach in Dallas - if the Cowboys ever make a coaching change, and Belichick is truly willing to be “just the coach” while taking direction (however “collaboratively”) from GM Jerry, COO Stephen and personnel boss Will McClay?

The once-all-powerful Bill Belichick bowing down to be “just a coach,” something he’s not been in the last quarter-century, increases the possibility of a Cowboys future.

But again, we’re standing by our reporting. A humble Belichick interviewing under Fontenot with his hat in hand and his tail ‘tween his legs? A humble Belichick repeating that act a year from now when the next Coaching Carousel starts turning, here at The Star or elsewhere?

Well choose to lean on the reflections of Thomas Dimitroff here. He’s a former Falcons GM and a former Belichick aide. And he said Blank ultimately decided to stick with his guys (and hire a known commodity in head coach Raheem Morris) rather than allow a Belichick shake-up.

As Dimitroff said on “Felger & Mazz”: “Any time Bill goes into an organization, you would assume whatever your thoughts are about him, he deserves the right to run it … Maybe there was a group inside the building who kept pushing back to Arthur — Let’s call it the way it is. Any organization wants to keep their world, right? Presidents want to keep their world.”

Dimitroff, surely a Belichick loyalist, was probably referring to guys like McKay and Fontenot wishing to “protect their desks.” But maybe unintentionally, he offers insight into Belichick’s mindset, too.

Bill Belichick had long been pretty much “the President of Everything” … meaning in Atlanta or Dallas or wherever, it’s Belichick, too, who wants that big “desk.”