As Bills and Jets show Jerry Jones what ‘all in’ means, Cowboys owner grapples with team’s uncertain outlook

During his regularly scheduled Tuesday radio interview, Jerry Jones lost his temper and criticized the station’s hosts.

But the short fuse that caused the Dallas Cowboys owner to tell his interrogators that tough questions were “not his job” and that he could “get someone else to ask these questions” possibly overshadowed Jones’ biggest logical fallacy of the morning. .

Less than 48 hours after his team’s 47-9 home loss to the Detroit Lions, Jones questioned whether the improvements his fans wanted were even realistic.

“Where are you going to get players? Seriously,” Jones said on Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan. “Where are you going to go get players for next week against San Francisco?”

The team owner, who is also the Cowboys’ general manager, had already insisted that “the reorganization… is impossible to do at this time of year.”

Jones’ argument had merit, just as his defense of the all-inclusive proclamation heard around the world has had merit. But on Tuesday, the Cowboys CEO chose a bad day to play the victim of how little he could change. Because while he lamented the inability to rebuild or bolster a roster, and the inaccessibility of finding upgrade talent, the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills were completing deals to acquire just that.

The Jets’ trade for six-time Pro Bowl receiver Davante Adams and the Bills’ deal for five-time Pro Bowl receiver Amari Cooper reflect the urgency of AFC East teams desperate to cash in on a Super Bowl window.

Splashing movements also reflect the willingness to try. something that Cowboys fans don’t see from their team’s owner.

Four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers, whom the Jets traded last year, explained the mentality.

“It’s up to us now,” Rodgers said Tuesday on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “We’re going with everything.”

At one point during their league meeting in Atlanta, Jones shuddered.

The meaning behind Jerry Jones’ words

If Jones had known in January how far his words would go, even he would have been stunned.

The “all inclusive” claim was powerful, in a vacuum.

Were the Cowboys going to make a dramatic trade to resolve the postseason embarrassments that followed three straight 12-win seasons?

Were the Cowboys going to change the course of head coach Mike McCarthy’s destiny by bringing in a legend like Bill Belichick? How much talent, strategy and, frankly, money could the most valuable franchise in sports (albeit in a cap-restricted league) invest in hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for the first time since January 1996?

There was irony in how much stock fans, the media and more put into Jones’ words.

Because careful observers of Jones and the Cowboys (and for decades, the line between the two has been blurred) know that the interview-friendly octogenarian speaks so often and so freely that it’s not unusual for him to contradict not only the time but even in the same conversation.

In a March interview with a handful of reporters, including Yahoo Sports, for example, Jones discussed his belief that quarterback Dak Prescott can and will win a Super Bowl within minutes of discussing the postseason deficiencies he would include in Prescott’s contract extension.

Jones praised McCarthy and his Super Bowl-winning resume as reason to believe his team could break its deep postseason drought. From the same padded chair and with the same notebook whose scribbles would also go viral, Jones expressed his belief that his coaches had not maximized the talents of their players.

Taken in a vacuum, any of the four positions had reason to catch fire.

Jones knows this when he speaks on the record with clearly visible microphones. After all, he had previously given the journalists enough time off the record and therefore had the opportunity to refrain from his tastier takes when the recorders started rolling.

And yet, in a fuller context and placed side by side, they painted a different picture.

A critical reading might dismiss Jones’ contradictions as the ramblings of a man, then 81 and now 82, who had traveled for a long day and was now speaking his mind, sometimes with circular logic.

A charitable reading shows Jones as someone extraordinarily knowledgeable about the factors that will influence his team’s success and should therefore influence his decisions.

Both sides of the coin shined again on Tuesday, as Jones alternated between measured and tempered.

Understanding both in confluence is key.

‘Idiotic things can turn into good decisions’

Jones’ anger, although he defended it hours later, should not be excused.

Threatening his hosts’ jobs borders on abuse of power, even if it draws more attention as Jones often does.

That better not happen again.

And yet, in Jones’ loss of balance, he provided evidence that contradicts a criticism he frequently receives.

Do all the decisions Jones makes, football and business, support victory at all costs?

There are solid arguments against it.

Does Jones still care, possibly as much as anyone in the league, about his results and his reception?

Tuesday was a reminder that it does.

The Cowboys’ 2024 season could go downhill as quickly as Jones’ radio interview did. But in his emotional defense, the Cowboys CEO made two fair if colorful points.

“Idiotic things can turn into good decisions, okay?” Jones said. “Smart things can turn into bad decisions.”

Translation: The Bills and Jets are ready to make a splash in the playoffs, but acquiring talent is no guarantee of success. After all, it was Jones six years ago who acquired Cooper at the trade deadline. And while the acquisition injected energy into his offense, an early playoff exit followed by a .500 year still led to a coaching change.

Which brings us to point #2.

“If you think I’m interested in a fucking phone call with you on the radio and sitting here and throwing all the good stuff in the dishwasher,” Jones said, “you’ve got to be smoking something.”

Translation: Sure, the Cowboys’ 2024 run game isn’t there yet, their run defense has been routinely cut down, and their three home losses have been as embarrassing as they have been out of sync. But a roster anchored by Prescott, receiver CeeDee Lamb and running back Micah Parsons could turn things around. Jones has seen wilder things happen.

The Cowboys will most likely see a coaching change this offseason. There could be schematic changes, if not also personnel changes.

Or perhaps the same kind of reversal of fortune that left Jones eating his “all-in” words makes his currently questionable decisions seem prescient.

“We have the ability to get better,” Jones said. “We have what I think can narrow the gap that we saw there.”