IRVING, Texas -- With the pieces starting to come into place, the Dallas Cowboys staff will be one of the coaching staffs at the Pro Bowl.
According to sources, Jason Garrett has agreed to a five-year deal and defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli has a three-year deal, and another source has indicated Scott Linehan is close to returning as well.
The Cowboys hope is to lock up the remaining unsigned assistant coaches in the next day or two, potentially having all of the assistants on deals through 2017.
Without the closure on the staff, the Cowboys were thinking of passing on coaching in the Pro Bowl. Now they'll get to do it for the second time in the last six years. Wade Phillips was the head coach at the 2010 Pro Bowl.
"Well, first of all we love to coach and we love to be around the game and it's a privilege to be a part of a game like that," Garrett said Tuesday. "We had a chance to do it a few years ago and it was a great week for us. Having said that, to get a chance to coach some of the best players in the league and interact with them, I think that's a positive experience for everybody. You certainly want to embrace that. It's a fun week, it's really, again, a privilege to be a part of."
Coaching in the Pro Bowl will keep the coaches away from next week's Senior Bowl practices in Mobile, Alabama. That's not considered that big of a deal because the coaches aren't familiar with the college players on hand and, truthfully, a lot of times coaches use that week to reconnect with friends from across the league as opposed to closely monitoring what's going on in the practices.
It is far more important for the team's scouts to be in Mobile for the week to observe the happenings and conduct player interviews.
"Typically we've been there for probably two and a half days in the past, get a chance to see a couple of practices on each side," Garrett said. "So we'll be able to get that film and obviously we'll be able to get the film of the game and then our scouts and other people who were down there will start that interview process with some of these guys. But we'll continue really throughout the spring."