Mike McCarthy won't return as the Cowboys' coach. Deion Sanders could be a candidate to replace him

DALLAS — Mike McCarthy will not return as coach of the Dallas Cowboys, who are going on three decades since their last Super Bowl title, owner Jerry Jones said Monday.

Jones said the organization and McCarthy mutually agreed to part ways. A search for the team's next coach begins immediately, he said.

''I have great respect for Mike, and he has led the team through some very unique and challenging times during his tenure,'' Jones said in a statement.

McCarthy's contract expired on Jan. 8 following a 7-10 season. Dallas was 12-5 each of the three years before that under him, but still hasn't been past the divisional round of the NFC playoffs since its last Super Bowl at the end of the 1995 season.

University of Colorado coach Deion Sanders — who played on the last Super Bowl-winning Cowboys team — has a good relationship with Jones and could emerge as a coaching candidate. The two have discussed the job, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because a formal interview hasn't been arranged, said the team was still in the process of gathering candidates.

The Cowboys had an exclusive negotiating window with McCarthy through Tuesday, but the parties decided to split ahead of the deadline.

At least one NFL team asked during that time about talking to the 61-year-old coach, who won a Super Bowl with Green Bay.

Before taking the Dallas job after a full season out of coaching, McCarthy was with the Packers for 13 seasons and had a 125-77-2 record from 2006-18. He was 10-8 in the playoffs and led Green Bay to a Super Bowl title at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Cowboys, 14 years ago.

There were also three other NFC championship games for McCarthy in Green Bay, and that is what Jones envisioned — and more — when he hired the coach in 2020 after Jason Garrett never got that far in his 10 years.

McCarthy finished with a 50-38 record in Dallas, including a 1-3 mark in the playoffs. That included last season, when the Cowboys were NFC East champions and had won 16 consecutive home games before trailing by 32 points in the fourth quarter of a 48-32 wild-card loss to the seventh-seeded Packers.

Dallas played the final nine games this season without franchise quarterback Dak Prescott because of a torn hamstring. Top receiver CeeDee Lamb, seven-time Pro Bowl guard Zack Martin, cornerback Trevon Diggs and rushing defending DeMarcus Lawrence also finished the season on injured reserve.

Garrett had the franchise's second-longest coaching tenure. Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry was the coach for the Cowboys' first 29 seasons, the same number of seasons they have now gone since winning a Super Bowl. Jones fired two-time Super Bowl winner Landry when he bought the Cowboys before the 1989 season.

Jones' next coach will be his ninth. He hired Jimmy Johnson from the University of Miami, and the Cowboys won back-to-back Super Bowls in the 1992-93 seasons before the college teammates at Arkansas had an acrimonious split.

Barry Switzer replaced Johnson, a Pro Football Hall of Fame coach, and won a Super Bowl in his second season but was fired two years later following a 6-10 season. Bill Parcells, another Hall of Famer, led the Cowboys to the playoffs twice in four seasons from 2003-06 but lost in the wild-card round both times.

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Maaddi reported from Tampa, Florida.

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