I see it more as Jerry telling Mike they want to cut Amari and make Gallup the No. 2 and McCarthy saying, Yeah, OK. Doesn't mean that the locker room viewed it as Mike not having a bigger role. For all we know, he could have been the one to tell the players and just said something like, "We're moving on from Amari." A lot of the time, subordinates have to be the ones to deliver bad news and get blamed for it.
I will be surprised if the Joneses wanted to keep Cooper at $20 million and McCarthy said, "No way! I want him gone."