What Cowboys keeping Mike McCarthy means for Bill Belichick’s future

The first domino in this offseason's major coaching re-shuffle fell on Thursday, and it was the objectively the most hilarious domino possible. When Bill Belichick and the Patriots agree to 'mutually part ways,' a lot of people pointed to the Cowboys as a team that would make sense for him. They had a playoff-caliber core, a great defense, and were seemingly just a ... wiser? ... coach away from being about as complete a team as the NFL has. And then, when the Cowboys got boat-raced by the Packers in their own stadium, that speculation grew. Surely there was no way that Jerry Jones would retain Mike McCarthy, right? Well, reader, that's where you're wrong. Because if you can believe it, Jerry Jones decided to keep a coach who clearly wasn't going to workout longer than he needed to:

After "losing home playoff game to inferior opponent," this is probably the most Cowboys thing possible. But hey, maybe it'll work next year. What this means for Belichick is that he can probably start taking his Atlanta Zillow searches a little more seriously. It seems like he's destined for the Falcons, especially with Thursday's news that he'd be interviewing with the team for a second time today:

Besides the fact that it's funny to learn that even *Bill Belichick* has to go through multiple rounds of interviews to land a job, this seems pretty set in stone. A 1-on-1 meeting with ownership is way less about your credentials and more about your terms of employment. If the league's in-house reporter is saying that "things are ramping up," that just means that no one can say anything official yet because they're behind on paperwork. So, yeah, the Cowboys missed out on Bill Belichick. But it's fine, they have Mike McCarthy!