Thanks in large part to owner Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys are routinely one of the NFL’s biggest marquee attractions. Also thanks to Jerry Jones, the Cowboys are routinely the NFL’s answer to a dumpster fire rolling down a random street.
Don’t ask the current Dallas general manager if he will change anything up, though.
Somehow, despite all the success Jones hasn’t led the Cowboys to, he’s got a sore spot at the mere suggestion that, perhaps, someone else more qualified and more competent should be running his circus-like professional football team.
In a new interview with Clarence Hill Jr. of DLLS, Jones went on an enraged tangent at the idea that he should step down as Cowboys GM. Despite just five playoff wins in the last 28 years and Dallas’ status as a league-favorite punching bag because of how the team vomits all over itself every single January, Jones was adamant that no one else — no one he could definitely pay a lot of money to — could do a better job than him.
Dearest readers, that’s what we call the definition of delusion.
“I’ve done it all,” Jones said. “So I have an ordinate amount of confidence that [expletive], if anybody can figure out how to get this [expletive] done, I can figure out how to get it done. I’ve been there every which way from Sunday, and have I busted my [expletive] a bunch, a bunch. And there’s nobody living that’s out cutting and shooting that can’t give you a bunch of times they busted their [expletive]. So hell no, there’s nobody that could [expletive] come in here and do all the contracts … and be a GM any better than I can.
Plus, I’m where the buck stops. When it [expletive] up, I got to cover it. And so there you can’t give anybody enough. Can’t give. There’s nobody can do it.”
It’s amusing that Jones mentions how no one else could “do” the Cowboys’ contracts better than he can. Whatever that means. Because it’s definitely not true.
For reference, Dallas was in relative dead salary cap hell in 2021, 2022, and for part of 2023, sitting comfortably near the top of the league in money it couldn’t use on players. It was a well-documented mini-crisis for a Cowboys team that fancied itself an NFC superpower without much future flexibility. More recently, Jones antagonized superstar receiver CeeDee Lamb over a monster contract extension he earned all summer, then ended up making him the second-highest-paid receiver in football anyway. Clearly, Jones is a master negotiator.
Is Jones certain some well-compensated yes-man or yes-woman couldn’t have handled the Cowboys’ player finances better? If I were him, I would do some more keen reflection.
It got even funnier when Jones suggested that he couldn’t trust anyone else to be the Cowboys GM after all his “bad days.” Like every mad king or just your average pencil-pushing, micromanaging middle manager, he needs to know that he has the last call. No matter what.
“I [expletive] have had hundreds of [bad days],” Jones said. “I’m emotional about it sometimes. Well, running this thing, that’s who I want to make the last call. Now, when I can’t [expletive] think, when I’m old and I can’t even do it… but I’m a long way from not being able to do it, too.
The reason I don’t let somebody else be the [Cowboys] GM is because I don’t have anybody that I will let do it to actually do it right. And they’re gonna have to come to me, and because I know where it is that you’re going to pay for it.”
My goodness. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that much sheer, unfiltered insecurity in one place from one obviously overmatched person.
I love the idea that Jones thinks his being old (he is 81, by the way) would be the only path to him relinquishing any responsibility for football operations in Dallas. It’s as if his being younger somehow made the Cowboys better at literally any time since 1996, the last time Dallas played in the NFC title game. Jones was 46 when he bought the Cowboys in 1989, and it was still the legendary Jimmy Johnson who deserved the lion’s share of the credit (by far) for building the 1990s Dallas Super Bowl dynasty.
I should note that none of this is to say that Jones has done a completely bad job from top to bottom. The Cowboys have enjoyed three consecutive 12-win campaigns and, in all likelihood, may very well push that mark to four straight years in 2024. The roster, while flawed, is that good.
But how much of that regular-season success (a key caveat) should be credited to Jones’ GM work and not, say, Director of Player Personnel Will McClay? You know, the guy Jones lays out a red carpet for every offseason, so some prospective team doesn’t hire him away as its new GM?
McClay’s demand is not a coincidence.
The only thing about these Cowboys, which I think can be safely attributed to Jones, is their status as brazen frontrunners. There’s no one better in the NFL at acting as an overinflated paper tiger who always wilts at the first sign of legitimate adversity. There’s no other team in pro football that embraces all of its unwarranted spotlight only to cower the moment it takes a single medium-power punch to the face quite like Jones’ Cowboys. They have personified their owner/GM to a tee.
Jones believes no one else could GM this second-rate organization to five playoff victories in 28 years. He’s right, but not in the way he thinks.
