Can Ex Packers Coach McCarthy, Now With Cowboys, Admit 'Dez Caught It'?

FRISCO - It's a great play and a bad call that changed the trajectory of many things - finances, careers, lives - and now, much too late, new Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy seems to be edging ever so slightly to admitting that all along he knew the truth: "Dez Caught It.''

Maybe.

Five years ago, in the NFL Playoffs, McCarthy, then head coach of the Green Bay Packers, helped engineer one of the most upsetting moments in Cowboys history when a spectacular and dramatic Dez Bryant catch in the fourth quarter at Lambeau Field was overturned. was overturned on replay when McCarthy challenged it. Today, McCarthy was asked if Dez caught it.

“I said after the game, that was one hell of an athletic play,'' McCarthy said at Wednesday's introductory presser here at The Star. "I mean, I was impressed. Dez and Sam Shields, you talk about two great athletes going after the football.''

Yeah, yeah, but ... Dez Caught It. Right?

McCarthy, sitting at the podium sandwiched between new bosses Jerry and Stephen Jones here at The Star on his first public day as the ninth coach in Cowboys history, insisted that under the NFL’s catch rules at the time, the call was correctly overturned. He then noted that Stephen Jones' membership on the NFL Competition Committee has helped the league fine-tune the mess.

"I can’t tell you how many people from Dallas have told me about that rule,'' McCarthy said, grinning at the fact his Packers beat the Cowboys, 26-21, to advance to the NFC Championship Game.. "It’s funny. It was a great catch, I’ll just say now, but it wasn’t then, technically.”

No, coach. That is not funny.