For one frozen moment, it doesn’t matter whether you thought the Dallas Cowboys should hire Mike McCarthy as their coach or whether you are happy with their decision to part ways with the man who has been at the helm for the last five years Years.

Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones united both sides of the discourse. Whether you thought McCarthy should stay or go, most would agree that the way Jones and the Cowboys came to that conclusion was lousy and unnecessary.

Questions surrounding McCarthy’s future in Dallas began swirling in October, when the Cowboys fell to 3-3 after a 47-9 home loss to the Detroit Lions early in their bye week. A little over a month later, the Cowboys fell to 3-7 with their franchise quarterback out for the season. A month later, with three games left in the regular season, the Cowboys were eliminated from the postseason.

This great decision regarding McCarthy didn’t haunt the Cowboys. Jones said on his radio show before the season finale that “the hay is in the barn” when it comes to McCarthy, meaning all the data points needed to make a decision were already on the table.

There has been a lot of talk in the past about how long the Cowboys let the Jason Garrett situation last in 2019 after the Cowboys were eliminated from the playoffs on the final day of the season. Garrett found himself in a similar situation to McCarthy this year as his contract expired at the end of the season. It took seven days for the Cowboys to announce Garrett.

For McCarthy it took eight days.

However, there is a key difference between the two situations. Because the Cowboys made Garrett wait a week, he was not excluded from another potential opportunity to become a head coach in the NFL. Last week, the Chicago Bears asked the Cowboys for permission to interview McCarthy for their vacant head coaching position. Although McCarthy’s contract with the Cowboys expired last week, they had an exclusive negotiating window with McCarthy until Tuesday.

The Cowboys rejected Chicago’s request.

It was a move that gave the impression that the Cowboys’ interest in bringing McCarthy back was well-founded. Maybe all the over-the-top compliments Jones paid McCarthy in the media over the last two months weren’t just distracting.

For six days, the Cowboys remained silent after denying McCarthy the opportunity to speak to the Bears. Other teams began conducting coach interviews. The New England Patriots even finalized his contract. Dallas did nothing until parting ways with McCarthy on Monday.

The optics are terrible.

For all the praise Jones has heaped on McCarthy in recent months, a key underlying factor has been the respect he has shown McCarthy. Jones talked about the respect he has for McCarthy’s resume, his abilities as a coach, who he is as a person and how the coach kept the team from completely unraveling after the season went off the rails was.

For all the respect Jones spoke of, he handled McCarthy’s departure in the most disrespectful way possible.

McCarthy’s prospects for another job should be good. He can now talk to the bears. The New Orleans Saints are reportedly interested in McCarthy and are continuing their search. The Patriots were never really an issue for McCarthy.

The real loser in all of this is the Cowboys.

By leaving McCarthy unsupervised for over a week, the Cowboys are a week behind other teams looking for a coach. They could have conducted interviews with employees of the top-seeded Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs. That includes hot names like Lions coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn. If they had interviewed them last week, the Cowboys could have talked to them again after conference championship weekend. If both teams go the distance, the Cowboys won’t be able to talk to them until after the Super Bowl at the earliest.

While it is historically unlikely that the Cowboys would have a vested interest in hiring head coaches like Johnson or Glenn, the opportunity to explore all options through these conversations would be optimal. The Cowboys don’t have that anymore.

The other thing to consider is how the Cowboys’ handling of McCarthy’s departure will make the Dallas bets look like candidates. Jones is someone who doesn’t particularly care about how others perceive his business methods, so he probably doesn’t care. And in reality, this botched moment will likely remain just a blip on the radar and do little to dull the shine on what is the appeal of being the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

But when the Bears asked for permission to speak with McCarthy, ESPN’s Marcus Spears, who played in Dallas for nearly a decade, said this about McCarthy.

“You would be shocked at how much respect Mike McCarthy has in this league,” Spears said. “And how many people think he’s a really good head coach and how he sets the temperature in a locker room. … I didn’t know much about how the league works – it’s really about how your peers talk about you. It’s really about how the people in the coaching profession, the general managers and the players who played for you. That is the greatest praise for what you have achieved. I know this, I live in Dallas and these guys really like Mike McCarthy. There’s a great level of respect for him in this locker room.”

That respect for McCarthy — who he is, as a man, and how he conducts himself — isn’t hard to see. Dak Prescott expressed that sentiment multiple times, as did McCarthy’s assistants and other players. Even Jones has spoken about it at length. That doesn’t mean the Cowboys had to move on with McCarthy and that parting ways wasn’t the right decision. But if a coach as decorated and respected as McCarthy is treated the way he has been by the Cowboys over the past week, it could raise concerns, including among those who may be future candidates. In the end, there are only 32 of these jobs and they are the Cowboys. But the last week doesn’t help. It was avoidable and unnecessary.

In a statement, Jones expressed that the decision to part ways was a mutual decision made independently by both sides. Jones said there had been “thorough” discussions over the past week about the past season and the “path forward for the team.” While that may seem like a legitimate excuse, Jones knows how quickly things move in the NFL and there was plenty of time to have these discussions sooner and be fair to McCarthy by coming to a resolution sooner.

Last year, the Cowboys made things uncomfortable for McCarthy. They allowed him to train with an expiring contract. They didn’t give him an impressive roster for his lame-duck season. After that, leaving McCarthy would have been an understandable decision Last season — It’s an understandable decision now. But the way the Cowboys have gone about it makes no sense and leaves a sour taste in their mouths as they search for the man who can end their three-decade championship drought.

(Top photo: Eric Hartline / Imagn Images)