Jerry Jones Spoke To Jason Witten About Coaching Position On Cowboys

According to Jane Slater, it’s her understanding that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones spoke to former Cowboys TE Jason Witten in recent weeks about a potential spot on Dallas’ coaching staff. 

Slater believes Witten was part of Jones’ initial plan to have the former tight end on Mike McCarthy‘s staff in 2025 and become an “heir apparent” for the head coaching spot. 

“I think the plan there was to make him an heir apparent of sorts. Mike McCarthy sort of surprised him by deciding that he wanted to end these conversations and pursue something else,” Slater said.

Slater is interested to see if Witten is still a candidate for Dallas in any capacity, be it as a head coach or assistant. In any case, Jones thinks highly of Witten. 

“Now we’ll see if Jason Witten will still be in play here. I just don’t know if that would be in a head coach role, but I do believe that he thinks very strongly of Jason Witten and his future as a coach. I just don’t know in what capacity that would look like,” Slater said. 

Earlier this week, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk named Witten as someone to watch in the Cowboys head coaching search.

Florio adds Witten is expected to become the coach at some point if not this year and many thought he would’ve joined the staff in 2025 to gain some experience even if they retained McCarthy. 

Witten, 42, is a former third-round pick of the Cowboys back in 2003. He was in the second year of his five-year, $29.6 million contract and set to make a base salary of $5.75 million for the 2018 season when he announced his retirement from the NFL back in May of 2018.

ESPN later hired Witten as a broadcast analyst for “Monday Night Football” and the Cowboys placed him on the reserve/retired list. After one year out of football, Witten returned to the Cowboys for the 2019 season. 

Witten signed a one-year contract with the Raiders in 2020. 

For his career, Witten appeared in 271 games for the Cowboys and Raiders and caught 1,228 passes for 13,046 yards receiving and 74 touchdowns over the course of 17 seasons. Witten was an 11-time Pro Bowl selection and made two All-Pro teams. 

Witten has spent the last four years as the head coach at Liberty Christian School which is a high school in Argyle, Texas.