JERRY JONES WILL MEET BELICHICK FOR ONE LAST HOPE, BUT IT WON’T WORK

Off goes Mike McCarthy in the endless string of failed coaches, who can’t help the senior owner of a $9.2 billion franchise win a Super Bowl for the first time since 1996, with Belichick eager to help

     Of course, he cracks. Jerry Jones is 81 frigging years old. Why wouldn’t he call Bill Belichick or Pete Carroll or, dare I say, Jim Harbaugh or Mike Tomlin? Anyone? After a Sunday that shamed Mike McCarthy and Dak Prescott and reminded Aaron Rodgers why he’s a lost cause in Green Bay, too, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys must change coaches to have any shot of seeing a Super Bowl in his lifetime.

     It’s in his dadgum bones to dump McCarthy and try an old-time coach he loves, such as Belichick, who would be taking over a team instead of creating a new one. Or Carroll, who still oozes enthusiasm and was run out of Seattle by management types who weren’t “football people.” Or maybe better, Harbaugh, who is presumed off to the Los Angeles Chargers until he sees contractual figures written by Jones. Would Tomlin leave the Pittsburgh Steelers to change his professional lot?

     That quickly, the best NFL coaching position will be in Dallas, which never can be America’s Team until it wins a championship for the first time in almost three decades and escapes a rut of 13 straight defeats without reaching a conference title game. That quickly, Jones will be removed from another horror show because he’ll never fix the football part of his Texas extravaganza, with a 5-13 postseason record since winning a banner in January 1996.

     “I’m floored,” he said after the 48-32 wastehauling by the Green Bay Packers. “This seems like the most painful since I’ve been involved in sports because we all had such great expectations. This is beyond my comprehension. I know where the responsibility starts and ends, I’m clear with that. The plays themselves are almost a blur to me. This one is burned into our soul. It is real. That’s as real as it gets.”

     He won’t address the situation until Monday. No one denies that objects are in place for some sort of championship run, if only the coach doesn’t choke away a first-round home game to rampant underdogs. There’s no chance McCarthy will return as the latest in a long line of post-1990s flops: Jason Garrett, Wade Phillips, the otherwise bullish Bill Parcells, Dave Campo, Chan Gailey. There’s little chance Dan Quinn, who coaches a defense that turned Jordan Love into the country’s anti-Rodgers quarterback, will be brought back. Even Prescott, after entering with 36 touchdown passes and nine interceptions, can forget about a $60-million-a-year extension after he failed with two first-half interceptions — including a pick-six — that led to a 27-0 deficit. His 2-5 career postseason? Ranks with Billy Kilmer and Alex Smith as the all-time worst.

     As a businessman, Jones is supreme in his field. The Cowboys are valued at $9.2 billion, ranked higher than any sports team on the planet, and he generated $1.05 billion in revenue last season. He claims finances are secondary on his list, saying, “It was never about the money. It was about a passion.” Well, feed your passion. I’d rather see him sell the team, but there’s no chance of that. Instead, he has three of the most conversational men in the sport’s history — Belichick at 71, Carroll at 72 and Harbaugh at 60 — who’ve won 10 championships in the NFL and the college game. Belichick will be front and center. Back in Week 4, guess what he said about Jones before the Patriots were clobbered 38-3.

     “I have a ton of respect for Jerry and Stephen (Jones, his son), and the way they run the organization down there,” he said. “They’ve had decades of success.”

     Does Belichick still have the growl to win after his four-season decline in New England, which led owner Bob Kraft to fire him and name Jerod Mayo as the new coach? Will he walk in and suddenly add poise to Prescott’s longstanding playoff mishaps? If you want someone to fix Prescott, it would be Harbaugh, who nurtures quarterbacks and created the best of Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco before he regressed into his kneeling self. But maybe he doesn’t want the immediate stress that would fill his life in Dallas. Carroll? He’s ready today, but he chased out Russell Wilson and left the Seahawks with Geno Smith.

     Just days ago, of course, Jones was leery of giving McCarthy a strong playoff boost. Did he know? “We'll see how each game goes in the playoffs,” he said. “I certainly haven't sat down here right in the middle of the playoffs and started talking to him about a contract. Why would you do that?”

     Now we know why. On Thanksgiving, Jones said the Cowboys were “certainly capable of winning the whole thing.” Know how long it’s been since he fired Jimmy Johnson, who won two Super Bowls, and brought in Barry Switzer to win a third? A generation ago. Johnson showed more fire on the Fox Sports studio set Sunday than McCarthy did. “I don't need to have people pointing the fingers one thing or another,” Johnson said. “You get your rear end in there and play the way you know to play!”

     It didn’t work. “Just shocked, honestly,” Prescott said. “From the beginning of the game, we got beat. There’s no which way around it. There’s no way to sugar coat it. Shock.”

     As always, the Cowboys will dominate their post-defeat offseason. The same applies to the Philadelphia Eagles if they lose Monday night to Tampa Bay, which could lead to coach Nick Sirianni’s dismissal less than a year after he reached the Super Bowl. Would Belichick prefer Dallas or Philadelphia? Everything Jones does will overtake other remaining teams, including the Packers, who head to San Francisco after Love’s three touchdown passes. C.J. Stroud or Love? The league has new stars, which can’t make Rodgers happy at 40 as he waits for his torn Achilles to heal. Can you imagine: Brett Favre … to Rodgers … to Love?

     “We came in here with a mindset of we’re going to dominate,” Love said. “A lot of people were counting us out and we didn’t care about that.”

     You will hear Belichick all day and all week. If the two meet, they will compile 152 years of wisdom. Unfortunately, one hasn’t won in five years. The other hasn’t won in 28. Will they try again? Will Harbaugh be approached?

     At some point soon, Jones cannot keep showing up and talking to media people after another January loss. He won’t be alive.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.