Much has been made on sports talk shows and among other NFL pundits about the supposed ‘mess’ that is the Dallas Cowboys handling of the Mike McCarthy head coach question. There is plenty of talk about Dallas mistreating Mike McCarthy by not making a decision, denying permission for the Chicago Bears to speak to him, and any other thing you can think of.

The only problem with all that is it doesn’t seem that Mike McCarthy feels that way. McCarthy is a longtime veteran coach with skins on the wall, and has options among other teams. If he felt that Jerry Jones and the Cowboys were mistreating him or making a mess of the situation, he has every opportunity to speak about it, or to change the narrative himself. But he hasn’t.

That’s because the most logical scenario here is that he wants to coach the Cowboys, Jerry Jones wants him to coach the Cowboys, and they are just negotiating what that looks like. Things like the length of the contract, the salary, how much power and influence McCarthy has over certain football areas, all of that needs to be worked out because in essence this is the Cowboys hiring a ‘new’ coach. Sure, they know McCarthy and McCarthy knows them, but he may be asking for more influence here and there, or it might be about the length of the contract, or any number of things we are not privy to on the outside.

It appears that all of this is happening over the last few days per a report from Jeremy Fowler at ESPN.

Cowboys coach McCarthy and owner Jerry Jones spent significant time Tuesday and Wednesday discussing the future — whether it’s a new contract in Dallas or McCarthy potentially coaching elsewhere in 2025. People I’ve talked to in Dallas believe McCarthy is more likely to stay in Dallas than leave, but both sides need to be sure, and they have less than a week to figure it out. McCarthy has leverage and options. And as several coaches have told me this week, why wouldn’t teams want to speak to a Super Bowl winner in what’s considered a weaker candidate pool?

The problem with the whole ‘Jerry is making a mess of it’ scenario is that it assumes McCarthy has no leverage and is just a puppet in all of this. It is more likely that McCarthy is asserting his interest in what he wants as the coach going forward, and Jerry is negotiating that with him.

It is also unfair to suggest that the Cowboys could have done this at any point during the season. That’s just not generally how it works. During the season coaches are focused on one thing, winning football games. Ownership might not even make up its mind until near the end of the season if there is even a chance that the coach comes back. Plus, McCarthy can now see that he has interest from other teams and can now use that as leverage in negotiating a new deal.

Suggesting that all of this is in Jerry Jones’ hands and that he is making a mockery of this severely underestimates McCarthy’s role in all of this. The most likely scenario that is happening is that McCarthy wants to come back, Jerry Jones wants him to came back, they are just haggling over the terms of what that looks like. Obviously it could all fall apart and animosity could break out among the two, so the end result could end up being messy. But if they can find their middle ground, they will have this all sewn up by early next week.

It’s just business.