Jones’ ego: Just can’t let go of the GM gig
Netflix premiered a new show this month, Aug. 19th, “America’s Team: The Gambler and His (Dallas) Cowboys.”
A show about Da Boys’ “Glory Days.”
I’m thinking that someone forgot to mention to the two brothers who co-directed and co-produced it, Chapman and Maclain Way, that the show may not prove that popular with Dallas fans because it reminds them that the team last won a Super Bowl in 1995, which was also the last year they won a Conference championship.
In the world of professional sports, a 30-year drought without a championship trophy is indeed a long dry spell.
Sure, Dallas won Division Championships in 1996, ’98, ‘2007, ’09, 2014, ’16, ’18, 2021, and 2023, but couldn’t advance to the conference playoff.
So many great players along the way, with nothing to show for it except disappointment.
What’s been the common denominator during all of those “We were this close, this close, to winning?
Jerry Jones staying put as the team’s general manager, dating back to the same year he bought the team in 1989. The same man whose ego, its size, now seems to match his estimated net worth: $16.6 billion. (Source: Forbes.) If he didn’t own the team, would he still be GM 36 years and counting?
Never in a million years, most would agree.
The Netflix show starts out with an interesting anecdote – how Jerry’s bid to buy the team from “Bum” Bright came down to a difference of only, only, $300K. The two oilmen just couldn’t agree on the bottom- line number, so Bright suggested they flip a coin.
Heads you win, tails I lose. Jones lost the toss, and as he describes it on the Netflix show, with a sardonic smile on his face, “I got (screwed). I just bought the Dallas Cowboys.”
At the time, 1989, the team sold for about $150 million.
Today, the richest franchise in the NFL is valued at $13 billion. (Source: Forbes.)
So even though Jones lost the coin flip to “Bum,” in 1989, aside from the three Super Bowl wins in 1992, ’93, and 1995, the team, based on post-season play, has been a bust ever since with regard to who has been the best team in the NFL for the past 30 years – the New England Patriots, with Kansas City quickly gaining ground behind the only QB who has any chance of surpassing Tom Brady as the game’s GOAT – Patrick Mahomes.
Dallas wasted the talent of Tony Romo, but that’s another story for another day.
Netflix now wants Dallas’s fans’ heads stuck back in the Glory Days, albeit now 30 years in the rearview mirror.
Not fair to perhaps the best sports fans any team could ever hope for, Dallas, but it is what it is – 30 years of one disappointment after another.
By the way, roughly speaking, according to Ticketmaster, attending a Dallas Cowboys game can cost roughly $300 to $550 or more per person, including a ticket priced around $245, a parking spot for around $40-$50, and a hot dog for approximately $9-$10, with costs obviously varying based on ticket price, game popularity, and parking choices.
The Recent Screwup
This year, just to show that nothing has changed, Dallas, with Jerry Jones’ ego still running the club, has managed to trade away the best “edge rusher” in the league, Micah Parsons, to the team’s old nemesis, the Green Bay Packers, dating back to the 1967 “Ice Bowl” Championship Game, which the Cowboys lost 21-17 on a quarterback sneak.
The Cheese Heads are delighted with this latest trade.
Dallas sports fans, still reeling from the insane basketball trade earlier this year – the Mavs’ phenomenal and generational talent, Luka Doncic, sent to LA for pennies on the dollar – are now stuck watching another generational talent, albeit football, Micah Parsons, leave for Green Bay.
Why? Because Jones’s ego, once again, got in the way of common sense.
Just an opinion. What team trades away a guy like Parsons?
Go to Youtube and type in – “Jerry Jones explodes on Stephen A. (Smith) Live Over Micah Parsons Drama.”
The Aug. 22 interview really kicks in at about 4:20 mark when Smith, the best sports guy now working the beat, in my opinion, gets to the point when he asks Jones: “What exactly happened with you and Micah Parsons that has you in this position where you’re so resolute in your stance right now?”
The writing on the screen says it all: “Jerry Jones Joins the Show – Cowboys Owner, President & GM.”
In response, Jones spins out some word salad before reminding Smith that not only is he the team owner, but also the team GM.
Don’t we know it. If a Cowboy fan listens to some past interviews with stars from the winning teams dating back to the early 1990s, like Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, after they won the second back-to-back Super Bowl in 1993, they had absolutely no doubt they could win a third Vince Lombardi Trophy for sure, and maybe a fourth after that. All the winning pieces were in place, and as far as they were concerned, their winning streak would have no end.
They had the talent and the coaching to get the job done.
Then Coach Jimmy Johnson ran afoul of Jones’s ego, said screw it, it ain’t worth it putting up with this, packed up his Corvette and headed back to his home in Florida overnight.
Aikman has said the team was devastated. Irvin and company have said in multiple interviews the same thing.
Sure, Barry Switzer joined the team as coach and helped win a Super Bowl in ’95, but Switzer was no Jimmy Johson. The rest is history – 30 years of frustration for Cowboy fans.
More of the same sad tale for Cowboys’ fans – Jerry’s right; everyone else is wrong.
Meanwhile, up in New England, Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, did what most team owners did for the past approximate 30 years – they hired a real general manager who knew the game better than Jerry, and he was happy to do so because in the end, what matters most to any sports franchise, apparently not counting Dallas, winning the Super Bowl.
In the case of the Patriots, for years, the acting GM was also the winning coach – Bill Belichick.
The results speak for themselves: Super Bowl wins for New England in 2001, ’03, ’04, 2014, ’16, and 2018.
The Netflix show does show one thing – Jerry Jones got very lucky when he was on the verge of financial collapse in the late 1980s, and the man is deserving of respect for hanging in there.
He was in debt to the tune of $50 million, according to him, and sinking fast with no rescue rope in sight.
Jones’s wife was so worried that he might actually harm himself, according to Jerry, that she called her dad for an intervention.
With his last gasp before he went belly up and the banks swooped in, he sunk more money into drilling one oil well than any of the other wells he had previously drilled $800,000.
That one oil well turned out to be a gusher, said Jones, and within a very short time, he was worth more than $100 million. Now he could buy the Dallas Cowboys, he said.
A Bad Trade?
This latest trade, though, made Aug. 28, Micah Parsons to the Pack, has more than a few Cowboy fans upset. Mainly because it seems like a lop-sided trade: a four-time Pro Bowler in exchange for three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kenny Clark and two first-round draft picks, scheduled for 2026 and 2027.
Clark isn’t Parsons. The defensive tackle position not nearly as important as an edge rusher (relatively new term for the old “defensive end” or “outside linebacker” position), which demands far more athleticism than a defensive tackle – strength and speed, of which Parsons is blessed with both. In spades.
Plus, first-round draft picks are notoriously risky because too many first-round picks have turned out to be duds, a la winners of the Heisman Trophy.
Division 1 college football isn’t the NFL.
In fact, according to the NCAA (ncaa.org), only 3.8 percent of draft-eligible Division 1 athletes were drafted by the NFL in 2023.
To put it rather crudely, it’s akin to boys playing men.
With the Pack, Parsons will now earn $188 million for four years, with $120 million guaranteed at the signing. (Source: ESPN.)
For the 26-year-old, one almost has to feel sorry for him. Micah Parsons grew up in Philly, but while most of his peers were rooting for the Eagles, the now-former Cowboy grew up cheering for Dallas, and even after the trade was announced this week, he said he never wanted to leave, and will still live in the Big D during the off-season.
In terms of football talent, Parsons and Hall of Famer, the late, great, Reggie White, are the only NFL players to ever record 12 QB sacks each in their first four seasons in the league.
In fact, taking it a step higher, Micah Parsons’ 52.5 sacks are the fifth most in any players first four seasons. (Source: ESPN.)
To put that into perspective, the Cowboys remaining pass rushers have only a combined 73 QB sacks during their entire NFL careers.
What about Kenny Clark, the guy that Jerry Jones traded Parsons for this week?
He has had 35 career sacks spread out over 140 games in his NFL.
The Bottom Line
So, bottom line, the Dallas Cowboys got a defensive tackle, Kenny Clark, age 29, who has completed nine seasons in the NFL with 35 career sacks vs. a player (Micah Parsons), age 26, who has only been in the league for four seasons, but already has 52 QB sacks.
With all due respect to Cowboys fans, only in the mind of Jerry Jones does this sound like a good trade for his team. Not to mention the many die-hard fans who continually refuse to give up on Da Boys.
Micah Parsons will return to Dallas wearing the green and gold in Week 4 when the Pack play Dallas on “Sunday Night Football.”
Putting a spin on the lop-sided trade, Jerry Jones had this to say during a 46-minute press conference Thursday, courtesy of ESPN: “This was a move to get us successful in the playoffs.”
Say what? “This was a move to be better on defense, stopping the run. This was a move to, if we get behind, not be run on.”
Say what? “And it was a deliberate move, a well-thought-out move to make this happen.”
Got it. Meaningless drivel. Meanwhile, the team’s franchise QB, Dak Prescott, will hope to improve on his 2-5 playoff record this season while enjoying his four-year $240 million contract, which extends through the 2028 season.
As actor Charlie Sheen used to say so often during his career breakdown: “Winning.” Actually, the guy who used the word in better form and fashion, the late, great NFL Coach Vince Lombardi, had it right when he said: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”