The Dallas Cowboys and team owner Jerry Jones decided to jilt the hopes of the team’s fans everywhere this week by bringing back coach Mike McCarthy, despite his sad-sack 1-3 playoff record in Dallas and the major upset the team suffered at the hands of the Packers in the playoff opener. But it might not have been entirely Jones’ decision.

According to a report from Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, the Cowboys wanted to at least gauge the interest of legendary coach Bill Belichick in the Dallas job, but were rebuffed.

Belichick, it seems, it getting closer to landing in Atlanta. Both the Cowboys and Eagles, it was reported, were shut down in their potential pursuit of Belichick, leading the Cowboys to stick with McCarthy and the Eagles to keep Nick Sirianni. One reason, oddly enough, cited by Florio is that Belichick did not want to work in a big media market anymore.

“One league source explained it, Belichick is believed to be done with ‘big-market media,’ making him more inclined to go to a place like Atlanta than Dallas or Philadelphia,” Florio wrote this week.

“As to the Cowboys and the Eagles, there’s also a belief in some league circles that both team expressed interest in Belichick, that Belichick didn’t reciprocate, and that those teams then decided to stick with their current coaches.”