He's letting teams get further along in the process with other candidates, by the time 1/14 comes up I bet most of these shit teams will be setting up 2nd interviews and you'll probably have one or two completely off the board (I assume Vrabel will be hired somewhere by the weekend).
So I think Jerry is gambling on whether or not there are any teams willing to wait on McCarthy, and if not Jerry has all the leverage.
It's ridiculous, of course, but so is about 75% of the stuff this organization does.