Mike McCarthy’s future has been sorted out in Dallas, and there won’t be one with the Cowboys. As for his defensive coordinator in Mike Zimmer? The question becomes a little more murky.

According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the 68-year old assistant is keeping his options open, even willing to return to the Cowboys should that be the desire of decision-makers. He could feasibly retire, or continue his coaching career elsewhere — nothing seems to be off the table.

“#Cowboys defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer tells me ‘all options are open’ on his future after Dallas and Mike McCarthy parted ways Monday,” Pelissero reported. “Zimmer and other Dallas assistants whose contracts expired are now allowed to interview elsewhere. ‘I really enjoy coaching,’ Zimmer said.”

Zimmer made a name for himself as an assistant in Dallas from 1994 until 2006. He finally got a chance to lead a franchise in 2014 with the Minnesota Vikings, where he coached until 2021. He spent two seasons with Deion Sanders at Jackson State and Colorado as an analyst until the Cowboys called upon him to return in 2024.

Meanwhile, McCarthy’s Cowboys finished the 2024 season with a 7-10 record. The last time the Cowboys had a losing record was in 2020 when they finished 6-10. That was McCarthy’s first year in Dallas, and he then led the Cowboys to three consecutive 12-5 seasons. 

After the Cowboys lost to the Washington Commanders in Week 18, McCarthy said he wanted to be with the team going forward. “Absolutely. I have a lot invested here, and the Cowboys have a lot invested in me,” he said, per the Cowboys’ official website.  “And then there’s a personal side to all these decisions. So, they all point in the right direction.”

McCarthy then explained why he should continue to be the Cowboys head coach. “I don’t like to talk about myself that way, but I’ll just be clear: I’m a winner. I know how to win. I’ve won a championship. I won a championship in this building,” McCarthy said. “And that’s who I am. We’ll see where it goes.”

Moving forward, multiple teams are expected to speak with Mike McCarthy about their vacancy, like the Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints. Regardless, it didn’t work out in Dallas, and the Cowboys are moving in a different direction going forward. Whether Mike Zimmer is part of their plans remains to be seen.

Why would Dallas ever hand over 18 acres of prime real estate within its city limits to University Park?

Yet that’s what University Park asked Dallas to do as part of a boundary adjustment application that would have shifted a school and church along Northwest Highway out of Dallas.

After the request hung around City Hall for about two years, Dallas City Council members rightly questioned the proposed land gift during a summer briefing of its Quality of Life, Arts & Culture committee. University Park has since withdrawn its application after being told its approval was “unlikely,” a spokesperson for the affluent city of 25,000 told us in an email.

We’re glad to hear it and support the far more reasonable approach of hammering out an agreement to address University Park’s underlying concerns. Dallas council member Gay Donnell Willis, whose District 13 includes the area, told us conversations between the two cities are active and ongoing.

The issue arose out of concerns of families at Michael M. Boone Elementary School, which opened in 2020 at 8385 Durham St. The school is within the city of Dallas and part of the Highland Park Independent School District, but about 80% of school families reside in University Park.

Willis said families have reported confusion between Dallas and University Park first responders over which city should answer calls from the school. They also had concerns over street and drainage problems around the school, as well as conflicting signage rules between the two cities and the school district.

University Park initially asked that Dallas’ boundary adjustment include only the school. But the application was amended to include Northway Christian Church because state law required the boundary in question to be contiguous to University Park, according to a city memo. HPISD also later joined the application. Both sites, plus rights of way, total about 18 acres.

“Moving a boundary of the city of Dallas is a really big deal,” Willis said. “There is a way to solve this without taking that measure.”

Council member Paul Ridley was a bit more pointed. “I just don’t like the idea that we are abandoning part of our property to an adjacent city that thinks they can service it better than we can,” he said at the committee meeting.

This isn’t just any property, either. A stone’s throw from NorthPark Center, this is some of the most valuable real estate in the city. The school and church don’t generate property tax revenue for Dallas, but a city staff memo said that if ever converted to homes, the land could generate an average of $3 million a year in tax revenue.

We are glad Dallas won’t consider moving its boundary. Doing so would encourage similar applications from other cities. Still, the Boone Elementary families are in a predicament; Dallas should help them out of it.

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com

The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday that Shannon Herklotz, who has overseen the Dallas County jail system for just under two years, was hired to oversee its own jail operations.

The role Herklotz stepped into has been vacant since May, following a retirement. The former chief deputy’s retirement came as the jail is facing rising scrutiny over in-custody deaths, including one that led to a criminal investigation and the arrest of two jailers.

Herklotz, 54, joined Dallas County in February 2023 after leaving Harris County, where he managed operations at the Harris County Jail in Houston — the largest county jail system in Texas.

Before then, he worked at the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the state regulator responsible for overseeing county jails and privately operated jails in the state.

“Shannon brings more than three decades of detention experience to TCSO and we are lucky to have him,” Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said in a news release announcing the hire. Waybourn has pushed back on criticism over the in-custody deaths, saying many were the result of natural causes.

A spokesperson for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond Monday afternoon to a request for comment about Herklotz’s departure.

A Tarrant County spokesperson said Herklotz would not be made available for interviews Monday.

Herklotz left Dallas County in December and joined Tarrant County earlier this month, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records.

Herklotz began his career in 1990 as a correctional officer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state’s prison system.

Herklotz joined the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in 1998 as a field inspector for South Texas and was promoted to assistant director of inspections and jail management in 2007, according to a bio on the Dallas County sheriff’s website.

The Sam Houston State University graduate was inducted into the Texas Jail Association Hall of Fame in 2009 and received the association’s President’s Award in 2019, according to the release and the bio.

Herklotz, after more than 20 years with the commission, joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in 2021. He remained there until January 2023, when he told the sheriff he would resign.

In a letter obtained and published by the Houston Chronicle, Herklotz told Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez that he pushed himself to “new limits” in the role, but the results were “not always what I/we expected.”

Herklotz had recently been demoted and forced to take a salary cut, the Chronicle reported. The downtown jail, among other issues, was facing overcrowding and was shipping some inmates to facilities in West Texas and Louisiana.

“I have no regrets and there is very little that I would change,” Herklotz wrote in the 2023 resignation letter to Gonzalez. “However, I feel that you and [Chief Deputy Mike Lee] want to move in a new direction and I do not feel as I have a place in that vision. I respect your decision[s].”

Herklotz’s rationale for leaving Dallas County was not immediately clear Monday, but reporting by KERA suggests compensation was a factor.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price told the station that the county could not match the compensation package Tarrant County had offered Herklotz.

As of November 2023, Herklotz was making an annual salary of more than $158,600, according to personnel records obtained by The Dallas Morning News in a records request.

The Tarrant County spokesperson did not provide Herklotz’s new annual salary and advised The News to submit a records request seeking that information.

Herklotz has assumed the role previously held by Charles Eckert, the former chief deputy overseeing Tarrant County’s jail operations. His departure came shortly after the death of Anthony Johnson Jr.

In April, Johnson, 31, died after a struggle in which a jailer kneeled on his back and used pepper spray on him. Two jailers are facing murder charges in connection to the death, which the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office ruled as homicide caused by chemical and mechanical asphyxiation.

Johnson’s death sparked criticism and spotlighted an increase in in-custody deaths at the Tarrant County jail.

Eckert said his decision to retire was not a result of the mounting criticism over in-custody jail deaths — the majority of which he and Waybourn, the sheriff, have attributed to natural causes.

“We had the one where we had the two officers who acted unprofessionally and, in my opinion, violated the law, but, the others, it’s just a sad fact of life,” Eckert told The News at the time.

Some deaths have resulted in civil lawsuits against the county that were settled out of court. Last year, the county moved to pay out more than $2 million in settlements, including a $1.2 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman whose baby died 10 days after she gave birth in the jail.